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CNN
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For doctors like Eileen Barrett, the pending Supreme Court case questioning the government’s ability to communicate with social media companies isn’t primarily a fight over the messy politics of online speech.
Rather, they say, it’s a matter of life and death.
“I’m very concerned that patients are being harmed by problematic information at best and outright misinformation at worst,” said Barrett, president of the American College of Physicians. “We’ve all cared for people who died from influenza. And now we’re all caring for people who died from coronavirus.”
Biden administration officials have long persuaded social media platforms like Facebook and X to remove posts containing misinformation about vaccines, the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 election and more.
But the Supreme Court will now have to decide whether these efforts go too far — whether the government has gone ahead with censorship of social media in violation of the First Amendment.
The case could be crucial to the 2024 election. The outcome could determine whether the Department of Homeland Security can legally flag posts to social media companies that may be the work of foreign disinformation operatives seeking to disrupt competition. There is. Cutting that line of communication would undermine years of cooperation that began in response to bombshell claims that Russia tried to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election.
Republican officials in two states, Missouri and Louisiana, and five social media users filed a lawsuit in 2022 over the practice, and the White House said it had “persuaded” the tech giants to post some deceptive posts. He claimed to have done more than just delete it. Instead, they say, the Biden administration has engaged in an unofficial backdoor coercion campaign to silence dissenting voices, a practice known as “jawbone.”
They argue that the social media company’s decision to suppress coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop in late 2020 is evidence of unconstitutional government influence, which they are challenging. The plaintiffs also say they relied on the platform to remove content the FBI identified as “foreign,” even though the posts were actually written by Americans.
“The result has been a silencing of the entire narrative,” said Jenin, a litigator with the New Civil Liberties Union, a legal advocacy group that frequently challenges government regulations and represents private plaintiffs in this case.・Mr. Younes said. “Policies were adopted without consulting the people. That’s why we have the First Amendment, so the government can’t do that.”
Oral arguments in Marcy v. Missouri come as courts and policymakers grapple with the power of social media to influence everything from patients’ medical decisions to the outcome of presidential elections. The debate over social media has sometimes prompted bipartisan responses, such as a bill passed by the House of Representatives on Wednesday that could lead to a nationwide ban on TikTok.
But this year’s legal battle over social media before the Supreme Court has taken on a partisan tone.
The high court is also considering state laws passed in Florida and Texas to prevent social media giants from suppressing conservative voices. These laws are being challenged by trade groups representing social media companies, who say they trample on the companies’ First Amendment rights.
The First Amendment prohibits government-imposed restrictions on free speech. The ban does not apply to private entities like Facebook, which are free to make decisions about the content they choose.
However, the Supreme Court has previously ruled that private entities can become “state actors” and subject to First Amendment scrutiny if the government forces them to take action. There is.
The administration maintains it did not force platforms to do anything, saying it never threatened social media companies with negative consequences if they refused to comply with the recommendations.
The U.S. government’s brief states that “Government officials violate the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution by acting in public or private to inform, persuade, or criticize the speech of others.” There is no such thing.”
Testimony in the case by FBI officials showed that social media companies often make their own decisions about how to handle government input. The official testified that in many situations, companies flatly ignored government warnings and suggestions about content that appeared to violate their terms of service.
Internal communications related to Twitter’s response to Hunter Biden’s laptop issue show that the article was demoted, contrary to what some critics say the social media platform demoted the article under pressure from the government or its own company. It also highlights the extent to which corporate executives are divided over whether to suppress coverage of the issue. Ideological bias.
“The government has no power to threaten platforms to censor protected speech,” said Alex Abdo of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute. “However, governments must have the ability to participate in public debate in order to govern effectively and make their views known to the public.”
A federal judge in Louisiana, who first reviewed the case, issued a massive preliminary injunction last year blocking the White House and numerous federal agencies from communicating with social media companies about content removal.
Last fall, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reduced the size of the injunction, which several institutions (the White House, Vivek Murthy, US Surgeon General, Center for Disease Control). and Prevention, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and FBI.
After the Biden administration filed an emergency appeal last year, the Supreme Court temporarily suspended the injunction, meaning it allowed federal authorities to continue communicating and agreed to hear the case.
Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas said they disagreed with the decision.
“What the court has done at this time in our nation’s history is give the government the green light to use heavy-handed tactics to distort the expression of views on an increasingly dominant media. “I am concerned that it may be seen by some as ‘news dissemination,'” Alito wrote. “That’s very unfortunate.”
The controversy has drawn the attention of state and county election officials concerned about decisions that could limit their ability to combat election disinformation. In a separate briefing, media outlets warned that if the court rules broadly in favor of the plaintiffs, it would “chill the free flow of information.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent presidential candidate who has opposed coronavirus vaccines and policies aimed at slowing the spread of the virus, tried to intervene in the case but was rebuffed.
Civil rights activists say a ruling against the U.S. government would threaten independent watchdog investigation and discourse and impede important work to secure U.S. elections.
“Information sharing among government agencies, voting rights organizations, and social media companies is critical to protecting against emerging threats, especially to vulnerable communities,” three prominent civil rights organizations said in the filing. .
From a physician’s perspective, the trend toward vaccination hesitancy is moving in the wrong direction. Dr. Benjamin Hoffman, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, blames misinformation on social media for a big reason.
The health care groups supporting the Biden administration were represented by the Democracy Forward Foundation, a left-leaning legal advocacy group.
“We have to deal with the impact of myths and disinformation every day when it comes to health issues in general and vaccines in particular,” said Hoffman, a practicing pediatrician in Oregon. “While our concerns are not necessarily at the heart of the Supreme Court case, their impact is really, really significant.”
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