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In response to efforts to stop the government from censoring the speech of people it opposes, the censors keep arguing that they have the free speech right to censor. Here’s how I originally described it.
When Judge Terry Doughty issued an injunction in Missouri v. Biden that banned the government from “specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression”, all hell broke loose.
Laurence Tribe, a lefty constitutional law professor, co-authored an op-ed complaining that the injunction “seems to maintain that the government cannot even politely ask companies not to publish verifiable misinformation.”
“The First Amendment certainly doesn’t prevent them from merely asking,” Tribe contends, and preventing the government from doing so “would turn the Constitution’s protection of free expression in an open society into an obstacle course for some of the most valuable exchanges of information and ideas we can imagine.” The most valuable exchanges of ideas apparently involve asking social media monopolies to take down content mocking the president.
The Biden administration has doubled down on Tribe’s argument that it has the right to “persuade” companies to censor.
In a filing Tuesday evening with the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the administration argued that a lower court judge’s July 4 decision was overly broad and would hurt the government’s ability to fight misinformation on platforms in a crisis.
“The government cannot punish people for expressing different views,” lawyers for U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration wrote. “But there is a categorical, well-settled distinction between persuasion and coercion. The government must be allowed to seek to persuade people of its views, even where those views are the subject of controversy.”
If the government wants to persuade people of anything, it should speak to them. Talking behind their backs to monopolies with vast censorship powers and then ‘persuading’ them to use those powers to censor its opponents is a violation of the First Amendment.
Persuasion is Biden giving a speech. Coercion is Biden officials telling companies what materials should be taken down. However it’s worded, it amounts to the government coordinating on removing speech against the will of the speaker.
Big Lies are the main danger.
81 Million Votes, MY ASS!!
I don’t understand how the government attorneys could make this argument without breaking up laughing. Are they ignoring the implied threat in the government “trying to “persuade” social media into taking down posts it doesn’t like. The spoken “We would like to see this post taken down” inexorably comes with it the unspoken “And if it isn’t you may have a tax or regulatory problem with a myriad of government agencies that will make your life miserable and expensive.” It’s no different than the gangster visiting a bar and trying to persuade the owner to use his beer distributorship by observing, “Nice little bar you have here. Shame if it had a fire or something.”
Exactly right.
The government did not have a state newspaper to preserve freedom of the press.
What is does have is coercive power to kill and destroy — and reward. All of this basically comes from the money coerced from the middle class, also. The recent article about how the American middle class sustains China was spot on.
Look at January 6th protestors living for years now, in filth and deprivation. Your “nice little bar you have” quote fits perfectly with the message conveyed by the imprisonment of overwhelmingly innocent people.
Indeed.
Arguing that the government has the right to persuade companies to do things to ordinary people that the government can’t legally do itself is a total moral inversion.
The framers failed to anticipate the unprecedented prescience and competence of the Biden Leadership.
They died centuries ago, [ Well before Joe cured cancer ]
Joe’s here right now, perfecting America before our eyes. Best not to interfere. Not when he’s hit stride and has taken command like a racing stallion, putting away the field in a closing furlongs of 23 and 2 fifth seconds.
Let’s do the smart thing and let Joe extend his [ our ] winning streak.
That sentimentalism about our old inadequate Constitution can’t be allowed to hold our hero back. His detractors make preposterous claims that must be ignored as attacks upon our Democracy.
Everyone knows that if Trump gains the White House, the USofA will be invading Poland. This can be easily verified by watching the View.
“War is peace/ Freedom is slavery/ Ignorance is strength”– George Orwell’s “1984.”
The Ministry of “Persuasion.”
A person would require a complete legal and logical disconnect from reality to even make this argument. VERY Orwellian of them, since the protagonist in ‘1984’ had to be reeducated due to his struggles with the same issue. I’ve come to believe that these people actually believe what they say. Through the practice of compartmentalization of data points, 2+2 can actually equal 5 in their minds. When you lie to yourself long enough, you start to believe those lies.
Ah, you’re letting them off the hook. They believe nothing they say nor care what they say as long as they hold power. Haven’t you ever met a lawyer.? They just want to win. Winning by any means is a victory.
What we are seeing is government by unashamed psychopathy. A lack of any morals or concern about tradition, human well-being, or safety. Not even a concern for children remains. And many duped useful idiots in our country are rooting for them. Evil is contagious. It is the easy way to live, for those in power, that is.
Hitler, Stalin Castro and Mao as well as Biden Tyrants always silence the people from objecting they also disarm the people before they round them up into Concentration Camps/Gulags
There might be some validity to the government’s case if there was some kind of barrier between said government and the populace. That is not the case. The Feds, and the states, have their own complete broadcast network (PBS). In addition, every government entity at every level has its own website and usually a social media outlet as well. No, quite clearly, this is all about shutting down dissent. Even a constitutional law professor should be able to see that.
And the media is happy to run anything the government puts out. Was the populace not barraged with the official message during the pandemic?
The issue is that the state doesn’t want any competition.
If you want to fight “misinformation” you need to provide factual information to counter it, not censor it. Of course, if you do not have factual information…
Nice social media you got there. Hate t see something happen to it.I