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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

#481

Post by ceejayoz »

dragonwriter wrote: post #473
ceejayoz wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're a government employee, speaking in the course of your duties, then it's not your speech, it's government speech. This would make quite a few Congressional hearings unconstitutional. For example: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/4-tech-industry-titan... It'd probably also apply to the President saying "lock her up" about a private citizen. Is that unconstitutional pressure from an elected official? >…

> This would make quite a few Congressional hearings unconstitutional Well, maybe, if you ignore the Constitutional carte blanche for Congressional proceedings of the Article I Speech and Debate Clause.

If you prefer, it'd make a whole bunch of press conferences unconstitutional.

It's quite common for elected officials to criticize private citizens and businesses. To be concrete: Ted Cruz (and a bunch of others) publicly pressured the NFL over players kneeling at games, in a clear attempt to suppress First Amendment expression by said players, without any hint of consequences.

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

#482

Post by dragonwriter »

JackFr wrote: post #472
roflyear wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't think of a scenario where the government should be able to express a thought about something? ;)

For instance, if you're the FAA, you should express opinions about airline operations, air safety, etc. That is your role. If you are the FDA, you should express opinions about food and drug safety. And in both those cases note that you are a regulator, and within your domain, it is your role to regulate the players. If you are the White House, you are not a regulator of anything. It is fine to express your opinion.…

> If you are the White House, you are not a regulator of anything

If you are the White House, you are the ur-regulator of anything any part of the executive branch is a regulator of, as well as the things that the Executive Office of the President is the actual direct regulator of (which are mostly internal to government operations.)

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

#483

Post by lern_too_spel »

nashashmi wrote: post #428
doitLP wrote: post #20

> Doughty said that one Flaherty [White House director of digital strategy] message in February 2021 accused Facebook "of causing 'political violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19 claims." Flaherty also wrote in a July 2021 email to Facebook, "Are you guys fucking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today." Sure sounds like a relationship where the power only goes one direction and th…

Now imagine if the same words were used by the trump admin personnel! Left media would scream words like bullying. This gives complete justification and vindication of how the trump admin behaved! Untouchable. This country is officially over.

Trump admin personnel behaved the same way. The platforms were free to ignore it in the same way.

The Trump administration is being prosecuted over entirely different acts.

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

#484

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

s__s wrote: post #217
1970-01-01 wrote: post #182

The free speech misinformation directly led to deaths of citizens. It is no different from any other speech that causes mass panic and confusion. I don't understand why this decision was allowed to become detached from reality.

Yelling fire in a crowded theatre is only illegal when you know for sure there is no fire and are intentionally trying to cause panic and death.

It's more akin to yelling that there isn't a fire when there is and avoiding all evidence so you can claim ignorance.

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

#485

Post by mrguyorama »

say_it_as_it_is wrote: post #356

These are private platforms. They can censor whatever speech they want. They decide whether to listen to big bad government with an axe over its head or simply get their head cut off, right? I mean, they could have just chosen to be crushed with legal battles from the government, right? Free speech and free will in America, right?

Which is why they were swiftly cut down when they ignored these requests.

Oh wait.

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

#486

Post by jonny_eh »

staticman2 wrote: post #474
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government . Why on earth would I? The government is already massively constrained in what it can say and that’s entirely appropriate because the purpose of free speech is to protect the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree with them. You may disagree with the ruling but if you’re on the side of free speech, you should definitely cheer i…

" I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government...the purpose of free speech is to protect the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree with them." That doesn't sound right to me. You basically just argued "The purpose of a right to free speech is to protect the right of free speech." It's circular reasoning. Why should free speech be a right? Out of curiosity I pulled up an…

It's also not free speech if it's only for some. The government is a very important player in our society, we depend on them being able to speak freely!

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

#487

Post by emodendroket »

evandale wrote: post #475
afavour wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's as stupid of a concept as a corporation having an opinion.. opinions are reserved for PEOPLE and I have no idea how you could come up with an argument to change my mind on that. I guess I don’t understand your point here unless we’re being ultra-literal and saying a corporation can’t have an opinion because it doesn’t have a physical brain developing individual thought. An example of “corporate opinion” off th…

> because it doesn’t have a physical brain developing individual thought. You summed up my point with a single sentence I can agree with, can't argue there! In your scenario what's the opinion Facebook has about advertising? I'm in favour of more bike lanes in my city but I don't consider that an opinion. Describing _why_ I'm in favour has an element of opinion but voting yes/no is not an opinion to me. Plus, any old…

Your conception of what constitutes an “opinion” is different than any other one I’ve ever encountered.

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

#488

Post by chipsa »

ceejayoz wrote: post #466
chipsa wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a private citizen, yes. If you're a government employee, speaking in the course of your duties, then it's not your speech, it's government speech. The First Amendment doesn't protect the right of the government to speech, because the government doesn't have rights. What does that even mean, for the US Government to have a right to speak without fear of action being taken against it by the US Government?

> If you're a government employee, speaking in the course of your duties, then it's not your speech, it's government speech. This would make quite a few Congressional hearings unconstitutional. For example: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/4-tech-industry-titan... It'd probably also apply to the President saying "lock her up" about a private citizen. Is that unconstitutional pressure from an elected official? >…

Elected officials are not government employees. It is not, in fact, turtles all the way down. They may be paid by the government, but the government does not dictate when they get hired and fired. It's possible that someone may be both an elected official and a government employee, but that's fairly rare (something like: Congressman and member of the military reserve, in which case they're only a government employee while activated).

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

#489

Post by calgarymicro »

dragonwriter wrote: post #465
calgarymicro wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Reading over pages 4 and 5 of the injunction[0], based on points 4, 5, 9, and 10, it seems government employees are now barred in any way from discussing any social media content or company policy protected by the 1st amendment with the companies or nonprofits. > (4) emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressu…

> Reading over pages 4 and 5 of the injunction[0], it seems government employees are now barred in any way from discussing any social media content or company policy that isn't explicitly illegal with social media Whether or not any involved content is “explicitly illegal”, they are explicitly permitted to discuss that content so long as it is related to threats to public safety and security of the US, content that m…

Lying about an election to mislead voters on election processes (i.e. time, place, and manner) is illegal.[0] "Threats that threaten the public safety or security of the United States" are also illegal. The judge lists several other things that are also illegal, such as malicious cyber activity and criminal conspiracy, so it doesn't seem like that section is intended to contains exceptions to section 8.

[0]https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/sca...

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

#490

Post by rtkwe »

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…

Except if you look at the number of complaints that were actually acted on it looks a lot less like they were that intimidating at all. From the Twitter files it seems like way less than 10% of the reported tweets had anything happen to them at all.
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