The health authorities of the United States urged social networks during the pandemic to remove misinformation messages related to covid or against vaccines. Now they couldn’t. A Louisiana federal district judge has cautiously banned much of the Biden Administration engage with and engage with social media, partially agreeing with a 2022 Republican lawsuit alleging the government had overreached. The judge justifies it in freedom of expression and the Republicans celebrate it as “a blow to censorship.”
Among the officials and authorities who are prohibited from addressing social networks are the spokeswoman for the White House, Karine Jean-Pierre; the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Xavier Becerra; the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, and many others, as well as entire agencies and departments of the Administration such as the Department of Justice, the Department of State, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Prevention and Control Centers of Diseases (CDC) and several more.
to all of them, in a resolution of 7 pages, whose justification is developed in another 155 pages, prohibits them to start meeting with companies and social media platforms “in order to urge, encourage, pressure or induce in any way the withdrawal, elimination, suppression or reduction of content ” published in exercise of freedom of expression, according to the text.
It also prohibits them from specifically flagging content or posts for removal or in any way urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing social networks to change their guidelines to remove, suppress, or reduce such content.
Apart from not being able to meet, these people and departments will also not be able to send emails, calls, send letters, text messages or engage in any type of communication with the networks for these purposes or carry out other types of indirect activities that influence the content.
As exceptions, the judge allows reporting social media companies of publications that imply criminal activities and conspiracies, as well as notifying threats against national security and other threats posted on the platforms, reporting electoral irregularities and other cases.
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Judge Terry Doughty of Louisiana, appointed by Donald Trump, has granted the injunction in response to a lawsuit filed in 2022 by the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri and some private individuals, including vaccine deniers and far-right communicators. The lawsuit alleged that the federal government had overreached in its efforts to convince social media companies to address posts that could raise questions about vaccines during the covid-19 pandemic or affect elections.
Doughty argues in his rulings that there is “substantial evidence” of a far-reaching censorship campaign. He writes that the “evidence presented so far describes an almost dystopian scenario” in which the government would have assumed a role similar to that of an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth.”
Republican Sen. Eric Schmitt, who was Missouri’s attorney general when the lawsuit was filed, has said on Twitter that the ruling is “a great victory for the First Amendment[que consagra la libertad de expresión] and a blow to censorship”.
The attorney general of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, has said through a statement sent to the AP agency that the court order prevents the Administration from “censoring the essential political discourse of ordinary Americans” on social networks. “The evidence in our case is shocking and offensive, as top federal officials decided they could dictate what Americans can and cannot say on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms about covid-19, the election, criticism of the Government and much more”, added Landry.
The Biden government has not had the power to order social networks to withdraw materials, but it has had open channels of communication to avoid harmful or dangerous content. Elon Musk has revealed after buying Twitter some communications that show that there were contacts between the Government and the political parties and the social network when pointing out some content as disinformation. Many of the examples of the case that is now in court actually correspond to the stage in which Trump was president and it was the authorities under his command who addressed the networks.
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