Considering there are only few actors (the social media, search, internet infrastructure companies) the coercion is unlikely to stop due to a court decision. The government and the legislature have a lot of leverage, up to an anti-trust action, and instead of threatening emails or public statements they could do it with off the record conversations, which are much harder to sue against -- the public wouldn't even know. The more questionable is the position of a company regarding anti-trust, title VII, {something else I can't think of}, the more leverage the government has.
I would imagine that making threats through 'off the record conversations' (which can easily become on the record) would look even worse to the courts than their current strategy.
Considering the censorship is heavily tilted towards one ideology, what incentive does the opposing ideology have to stop this? It worked perfectly fine with no political capital loss in 2020 and 2022 midterms. In fact, most people within that ideology agree with the tech giants and want more censorship.
It is seriously unclear to me what ideology you think is promoting censorship the most, from my perspective the cat got out of the bag in the USA and now different kinds of censorship are being advocated for across the political spectrum.
What is likely is that the wheels of censorship will do what they always do and censor that other group. Nobody is immune to censorship for long.
Hopefully that will cause enough ruckus that we go back to being anti-censorship.
Censorship isn't just impacting one group - it's a whole bunch of smaller subgroups that make up both parties. It also hurts the uncensored groups because instead of responding to their opponents they are now just shadowboxing themselves in a corner.
> Appeals Court Rules White House Overstepped First Amendment on Social Media
No, the appeals court did not. This headline is inaccurate.
It found that the Administration likely did so in a narrower set of cases than the trial court had, in upholding in part and striking down in part a preliminary injunction placed by the trial court (likelihood of success on the merits is one of several considerations in issuing a preliminary injunction, but it is distinct from an actual ruling on the merits.)
Trial and an actual decision on the merits will happen later.
Just to be clear, this appeals ruling mostly reversed the original decision of the original court. The original court's decision applied 10 different restrictions on government officials. The 5th circuit (itself widely known to be conservative) overturned nine of those ten restrictions, and also overturned many of the agencies they apply to.
The appeals ruling, therefore, is being interpreted here (and, in many cases, intentionally spun) in a way exactly opposite to what it actually found, which is the government largely acted correctly.
The powers that be decided that Covid was a virus with a droplet based spread, like the flu, and they silenced domain experts who asserted that Covid was a fully airborne virus, like the measles.
The mitigations that were put in place targeted a droplet based spread (washing hands, wiping down surfaces, putting up sneeze guards, staying six feet apart) and were ineffective against a virus you contract by inhaling it as it floats in the air.
Unfortunately, it took two years for the truth about Covid to be begrudgingly accepted.
> Two years of COVID: The battle to accept airborne transmission
Where is evidence that the government suppressed discussion about aerosols?
The article you linked about speaks only about believing.
Yes they didn't believe it but that is a very different situation.
Also I will point out that a huge portion of people believe the lockdowns were ineffective which is the only solve for aerosols.
EDIT: I will agree that the origin story was suppressed too much, given the uncertainty and some questions without disinformation in them were removed in the cross fire. But I hadn't heard heavy handed responses to aerosol theories.
The government issued categorical statements that Covid was NOT airborne.
The government instructed social media platforms to suppress "misinformation" that went against the official party line.
The government used extreme threats against platforms that did not comply.
> In an interview with MSNBC about anti-vaccine misinformation, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield responded to a question asking if Biden would change Section 230 to make companies “liable for publishing that information, and then open to lawsuits.” Bedingfield responded that “we’re reviewing that, and certainly they should be held accountable.”
I personally had a one decade old account banned on one social platform for asserting that Covid was airborne and many posts on other platforms deleted for sharing links that supported the airborne Covid theory as "misinformation".
We literally had platforms deleting links to information provided by sites like the New England Journal of Medicine or Nature if they didn't toe the official party line.
There is the phrase "fighting the last war" which describes people who can't let go of old lessons learned when facing something new.
In this case, remember that there was a time when people thought bacterial infections, like cholera, or parasitic infections, like malaria, were spread through bad smells in the air.
Unfortunately there are scientists who overgeneralize the lesson that bacteria and parasites are not transmitted through the air into a dogmatic belief that nothing can spread through the air, even viruses, and those sorts of people were in charge at the WHO and CDC.
> Early in the pandemic, the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. That mistake and the prolonged process of correcting it sowed confusion and raises questions about what will happen in the next pandemic.
It took domain experts two years to force those in charge to accept the truth that infected people do emit Covid into the air when they are just breathing normally, that the Covid they emit floats in the air for hours, and that people who inhale the virus do get infected.
Which is why it's unwise to censor everyone who doesn't toe the party line. Not just illegal, unwise.
I don't think it would be if it wasn't for a bunch of people who decided to start an unrelated holy war against any mitigation of the virus. They caused everyone to become hyper alert for any signs of dissent which has made this whole thing measurably harder to manage.
Possibly because surgical masks, plexiglass, washing hands, hand disinfectant, surfaces disinfectant... were cheap measures, already under way, but even more useless for airborne virus
They possibly wanted the spectacle that people could/were doing something to protect themselves
Different types of mitigations which have different levels of social acceptance. Washing hands is a more socially acceptable mitigation than wearing high quality masks, for example.
I don't know why the Whitehouse thought this would fly to begin with.
They basically said "Do X or there will be consequences". Every crappy compliance course I have ever sat though points out that behavior as a form of coercion. The Whitehouse clearly knew they weren't supposed to be doing this.
After the fact doesn't matter. If all tyranny requires is an after-the-fact judicial ruling then tyranny will just find a way to win before then.
The fact is, there is no such thing as a private company. Infringing speech is happening all over the place; the fact the Constitutions states Congress cannot enact laws against speech is tantamount to the people themselves being unable to enact action against speech and expression. Congress is the people, and the people don't get to privatize tyranny. Period.
There are plenty of legal restrictions on free speech. Defamation, for example. We don't consider it laws against defamation to be tyranny, but rather legitimate acts of governance.
Moreover, the case in question did not involve an act of Congress, or in fact any express act of governance at all. There's a difference between being legally or illegally compelled by the government and simply being contacted by a government official. The government has freedom of speech, too, and they are allowed to express concern about dissemination of materials counter to the public interest.
Readit News
Hopefully that will cause enough ruckus that we go back to being anti-censorship.
Censorship isn't just impacting one group - it's a whole bunch of smaller subgroups that make up both parties. It also hurts the uncensored groups because instead of responding to their opponents they are now just shadowboxing themselves in a corner.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
I assume you’re talking about the right, since the left keeps talking about using antitrust to break up big tech.
This is the craziest thing I've read all day.
No, the appeals court did not. This headline is inaccurate.
It found that the Administration likely did so in a narrower set of cases than the trial court had, in upholding in part and striking down in part a preliminary injunction placed by the trial court (likelihood of success on the merits is one of several considerations in issuing a preliminary injunction, but it is distinct from an actual ruling on the merits.)
Trial and an actual decision on the merits will happen later.
Deleted Comment
Dead Comment
The appeals ruling, therefore, is being interpreted here (and, in many cases, intentionally spun) in a way exactly opposite to what it actually found, which is the government largely acted correctly.
Dead Comment
The powers that be decided that Covid was a virus with a droplet based spread, like the flu, and they silenced domain experts who asserted that Covid was a fully airborne virus, like the measles.
The mitigations that were put in place targeted a droplet based spread (washing hands, wiping down surfaces, putting up sneeze guards, staying six feet apart) and were ineffective against a virus you contract by inhaling it as it floats in the air.
Unfortunately, it took two years for the truth about Covid to be begrudgingly accepted.
> Two years of COVID: The battle to accept airborne transmission
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/3/11/two-years-of-co...
The article you linked about speaks only about believing.
Yes they didn't believe it but that is a very different situation.
Also I will point out that a huge portion of people believe the lockdowns were ineffective which is the only solve for aerosols.
EDIT: I will agree that the origin story was suppressed too much, given the uncertainty and some questions without disinformation in them were removed in the cross fire. But I hadn't heard heavy handed responses to aerosol theories.
The government instructed social media platforms to suppress "misinformation" that went against the official party line.
The government used extreme threats against platforms that did not comply.
> In an interview with MSNBC about anti-vaccine misinformation, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield responded to a question asking if Biden would change Section 230 to make companies “liable for publishing that information, and then open to lawsuits.” Bedingfield responded that “we’re reviewing that, and certainly they should be held accountable.”
https://www.theverge.com/22585152/biden-white-house-facebook...
I personally had a one decade old account banned on one social platform for asserting that Covid was airborne and many posts on other platforms deleted for sharing links that supported the airborne Covid theory as "misinformation".
We literally had platforms deleting links to information provided by sites like the New England Journal of Medicine or Nature if they didn't toe the official party line.
In this case, remember that there was a time when people thought bacterial infections, like cholera, or parasitic infections, like malaria, were spread through bad smells in the air.
Unfortunately there are scientists who overgeneralize the lesson that bacteria and parasites are not transmitted through the air into a dogmatic belief that nothing can spread through the air, even viruses, and those sorts of people were in charge at the WHO and CDC.
> Early in the pandemic, the World Health Organization stated that SARS-CoV-2 was not transmitted through the air. That mistake and the prolonged process of correcting it sowed confusion and raises questions about what will happen in the next pandemic.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00925-7
It took domain experts two years to force those in charge to accept the truth that infected people do emit Covid into the air when they are just breathing normally, that the Covid they emit floats in the air for hours, and that people who inhale the virus do get infected.
Which is why it's unwise to censor everyone who doesn't toe the party line. Not just illegal, unwise.
They possibly wanted the spectacle that people could/were doing something to protect themselves
They basically said "Do X or there will be consequences". Every crappy compliance course I have ever sat though points out that behavior as a form of coercion. The Whitehouse clearly knew they weren't supposed to be doing this.
The fact is, there is no such thing as a private company. Infringing speech is happening all over the place; the fact the Constitutions states Congress cannot enact laws against speech is tantamount to the people themselves being unable to enact action against speech and expression. Congress is the people, and the people don't get to privatize tyranny. Period.
Moreover, the case in question did not involve an act of Congress, or in fact any express act of governance at all. There's a difference between being legally or illegally compelled by the government and simply being contacted by a government official. The government has freedom of speech, too, and they are allowed to express concern about dissemination of materials counter to the public interest.