Court Prohibits Government Representatives from Communicating with Tech Firms
A federal judge has issued a ruling that prohibits the Biden administration and federal officials from engaging with social media companies, potentially leading to significant consequences. According to The Washington Post, a judge appointed by former President Trump has granted a temporary injunction to the state attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri. These two Republican lawyers had filed a lawsuit against President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and other government officials, alleging that they had collaborated with Meta, Twitter, and YouTube to censor accurate information regarding the COVID-19 lab leak theory, the 2020 election, and various other subjects.
Although Judge Terry A. Doughty has yet to make a final decision in the case, he wrote in his order that Republican attorneys general “proved evidence of a massive effort by the defendants, from the White House to federal agencies, to suppress speech based on the speech’s content.” While the order grants some exemptions for the government to communicate with Meta, Twitter and YouTube, it also specifically targets more than a dozen individual authorities. Among them are Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The lawsuit is the latest attempt by some Republicans to claim that the Biden administration pressured social media platforms to censor conservative views. The GOP has voiced that complaint in a few different places — including, most notably, a contentious House Oversight Committee hearing earlier this year regarding the so-called “Twitter files.” The lawsuit filed by Louisiana and Missouri attorneys is different. Instead of directly targeting Meta, Twitter and YouTube, which argue they have a First Amendment right to decide what content is allowed on their platforms, the attorneys general sued the federal government. Whatever happens next, this strategy has already led to the most successful effort yet to combat online content moderation.
Separately, it is worth noting that Meta, Twitter and YouTube have recently reduced their moderation practices in one way or another. In the case of YouTube, for example, the company announced last month that it would begin allowing videos that falsely claim fraud occurred during the 2020 election. Meta, meanwhile, last month reinstated its misleading COVID-19 rules for Instagram and Facebook in countries where the pandemic is no longer considered a national emergency.
