Judge Rules Biden Administration Likely Trampled on Free Speech on Social Media

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[–]MeganDelacroix🤡🌎 detainee 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

"Journalists" outraged at ruling against censorship, Robby Soave and others doubt this ruling has teeth:

If Doughty's decision prevents the federal employees from engaging in such heavy-handed muzzling, it would be a welcome relief. Unfortunately, there is reason to doubt that the decision will meaningfully constrain the feds. That's because Doughty drew up a list of actions that are "NOT prohibited by this preliminary injunction," and this list could reasonably be read to permit the very sort of behavior—jawboning—that has produced the censorship.

Doughty's terms, for instance, allow the federal government to notify social media companies about threats to national security, criminal efforts to suppress voting, foreign attempts to influence elections, and communications that intend "to detect, prevent, or mitigate malicious cyber activity." It's worth recalling that prior to COVID-19, many of the communications between the feds and the platforms concerned precisely these subjects: purported foreign influence, malicious activity, etc...

Will Duffield, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, is similarly concerned that Doughty's ruling might not make enough of a difference.

The top half of the injunction reads like a "complete and total shutdown of government communication with social media platforms until courts figure out what's going on, but the bottom half includes exceptions wide enough to include many of the most controversial government communications with platforms," he says.

[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

jawboning

I had read but forgotten that term when I was trying to find articles I'd read about how courts have defined and ruled on this in the past.

I think the doubters are right, there's still way too much wiggle room and we know these people will squeeze their fat heads through whatever gap remains using the most specious reasoning. I mean, if "foreign influence" is such a threat, shouldn't federal law enforcement be doing law enforcement-y things instead of sitting on their butts telling Twitter to cancel someone's account?

I hope the plaintiffs present evidence of how the definitions, especially, and the punishments have been applied inequitably. People questioning the efficacy of vaccines canceled while people STILL pushing the lie that they're effective suffer no consequences. Or the election interference that every legacy and social media entity engaged in by unilaterally shutting down the Hunter Biden laptop story when it was easily proven to be true the whole time.

[–]MeganDelacroix🤡🌎 detainee 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Ben Weingarten from RealClearInvestigations talks about the ruling on Fox Business

Substack post

The initial substack post mentioned in the video, linked on RCP today: Where Did the Bidens' Money Come From?

[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

From the second link:

That revelation comes from a new report from the House Weaponization Subcommittee on little-known Homeland Security sub-agency Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency — which as readers know was the focus of my Congressional testimony in May as the linchpin of federal government-led speech policing.

That ruling lends credence to the plaintiffs’ claims that the government violated the First Amendment “in a massive effort to suppress disfavored conservative speech," as Judge Doughty put it.

From the IRS post:

...the idea that he was the target of a mere “tax probe,” and the focus on his debauchery and drug abuse, served as purposeful diversions from how seriously his “work” threatened the national interest.

Namely, Hunter was the bag man in a likely criminal, obviously unethical, and clearly national-security compromising scheme to monetize patriarch Joe’s office for millions of dollars from corrupt nations led by Ukraine, and adversarial nations led by China and Russia.

Absent those dealings, there would have been no income for Hunter to hide; taxes for him to evade; fraudulent expenses concealing blackmailable acts like allegedly criminally trafficking in prostitutes for him to record; nor any need for the Bidens and their associates to create a complex structure of shell companies to surreptitiously and perhaps illegally flow the funds from the family influence peddling business on down even to one of the president’s grandchildren.

I think Weingarten nailed it all the way around.

[–]MeganDelacroix🤡🌎 detainee 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Yeah, and you know, once upon a time I would've thought this part too conspiratorial, but now -

It’s not clear at this point whether the Biden family’s corruption and crimes, or the regime-wide cover-up of them are worse.

That that regime has almost assuredly long known where all the Biden bodies were buried, and that presumably it has viewed it as a feature, not a bug – giving it total leverage and therefore control over Biden, while also arming it with everything it would need to force him into retirement at the point he is no longer useful – would seem like a scandal in and of itself.

[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

once upon a time I would've thought this part too conspiratorial

I'm totally with you, and sadly my changed attitude isn't limited to this situation. The thing is, when they act like they're engaged in a secret conspiracy to convince you something is true that's the exact opposite of what your own lyin' eyes tells you is true, it's hard not to think "yeah, that's what I figured."

[–]MeganDelacroix🤡🌎 detainee 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The Journal fails to mention this:

In his order, the judge made some exceptions for communications between the government officials and the companies, including to warn them of national security threats or criminal activity.

(WaPo, cited in Breitbart)

I mean... wasn't all the censorship and suppression justified on the basis of "national security?"

Republicans are acting much happier than they ought to be.

edit: ZeroHedge has more reactions, including Glenn rebuking the NYT.

[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

In a 155-page ruling issued Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana barred White House officials and multiple federal agencies from contacting social-media companies with the purpose of suppressing political views and other speech normally protected from government censorship.

The judge’s injunction came in a lawsuit led by the Republican attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana who alleged that the Biden administration fostered a sprawling “federal censorship enterprise.” The federal government, the lawsuit claimed, pressured social-media platforms to scrub away disfavored views about Covid-19 health policies, the origins of the pandemic, the Hunter Biden laptop story, election security and other sensitive topics.

The case is among the most potentially consequential First Amendment battles pending in the courts, testing the limits on government scrutiny of social-media content on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other major platforms.

[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable[S] 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Unless they also put a stop to the Censorship Industrial Complex entities receiving funds from the government, this is likely to be pretty toothless IMO.