Summary:
WASHINGTON, July 4 (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday restricted some agencies and officials of the administration of President Joe Biden from meeting and communicating with social media companies to moderate their content, according to a court filing. The injunction came in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, who alleged that U.S. government officials went too far in efforts to encourage social media companies to address posts they worried could contribute to vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic or upend elections.
A White House official said the Justice Department was reviewing the order and will evaluate its options.
The litigation was originally filed by former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.
The injunction was first reported by the Washington Post.
Reuters isn’t paywalled, is it? It loaded right up for me.
Regardless:
WASHINGTON, July 4 (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday restricted some agencies and officials of the administration of President Joe Biden from meeting and communicating with social media companies to moderate their content, according to a court filing.
The injunction came in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, who alleged that U.S. government officials went too far in efforts to encourage social media companies to address posts they worried could contribute to vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic or upend elections.
The ruling said government agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI could not talk to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech” under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
A White House official said the Justice Department was reviewing the order and will evaluate its options.
The litigation was originally filed by former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. Schmitt, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in November, used Twitter to welcome the injunction and called it a win for free speech.
The order also mentioned by name officials including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in its restrictions.
Judge Terry Doughty, in an order filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, made some exceptions for cWASHINGTON, July 4 (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday restricted some agencies and officials of the administration of President Joe Biden from meeting and communicating with social media companies to moderate their content, according to a court filing.
The injunction came in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, who alleged that U.S. government officials went too far in efforts to encourage social media companies to address posts they worried could contribute to vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic or upend elections.
The ruling said government agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI could not talk to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech” under the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
A White House official said the Justice Department was reviewing the order and will evaluate its options.
The litigation was originally filed by former Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry. Schmitt, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in November, used Twitter to welcome the injunction and called it a win for free speech.
The order also mentioned by name officials including Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in its restrictions.
Judge Terry Doughty, in an order filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, made some exceptions for communications between government officials and the companies, including to warn about risks to national security and about criminal activity.
The injunction was first reported by the Washington Post.
Tuesday’s order marks a win for Republicans who had sued the Biden administration, saying it was using the coronavirus health crisis and the threat of misinformation as an excuse to curb views that disagreed with the government.
U.S. officials have said they were aiming to tamp down misinformation about COVID vaccines to curb preventable deaths.
Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms (META.O), Twitter, and Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube did not respond to requests for comment.ommunications between government officials and the companies, including to warn about risks to national security and about criminal activity.
The injunction was first reported by the Washington Post.
Tuesday’s order marks a win for Republicans who had sued the Biden administration, saying it was using the coronavirus health crisis and the threat of misinformation as an excuse to curb views that disagreed with the government.
U.S. officials have said they were aiming to tamp down misinformation about COVID vaccines to curb preventable deaths.
Facebook and Instagram parent Meta Platforms (META.O), Twitter, and Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube did not respond to requests for comment.
I would argue that H&HS has a duty to go after medical disinformation as part of their mandate. Consider the following case:
https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/08/us/text-message-suicide-michelle-carter-conrad-roy/index.html
Text messages were used to drive someone to suicide. They were just words, but neglected to take into consideration the power of those words. The texter was convicted of “reckless conduct”.
Consider, as well, how many stories you’ve read of hate speech leading to violence. Willful medical disinformation during a health crisis should be considered as the same, and social media platforms should be required to take down such content, just as they would speech that drives someone to suicide.
Afraid it is, links to it are even blocked by several subreddits. With reuters they give you a small number of free reads per year and then block you after that. Usually I end up getting a nag screen that can’t be bypassed, but some links like yours don’t even load the page, they simply give a blank screen.
Regardless, thanks for posting the article. And my comment wasn’t directed at you specifically, there are a LOT of posts I’m seeing all over lemmy where people just post a link and a title, but absolutely no content to even suggest (other than the title) what the post might be about. And they always seem to have zero comments, which I assume is because most people aren’t willing to click through.
I do like that the original source is used so that it’s clearly visible when scrolling past the headline. It helps prevent tabloid headlines from having the same weight as legitimate news outlets since you can quickly tell where it came from. However, I am also getting into a habit of also including an archive link in the post body as well. I don’t think I’ve ever been paywalled on Reuters, though it may also be a regional thing; I browse it semi-regularly.
When I post news, I’m hit or miss whether I put the whole article text in the post or not as I’m always worried about the instance host getting a copyright complaint. lol.
Oh I agree, the source SHOULD be included as the post URL. I typically click into the post first and then click the article link, so that if I want to comment on what I read then I don’t have to try to find the post in my feed again. But for posts like this I come in and see a blank post, click the link and get a blank page, and at that point I have zero information about what’s going on and I’ve generally lost all patience with the topic. Honestly I don’t even care so much about the entire article being pasted here, I just wish people would at least put in a short summary or something.
Sorry. It loaded right up for me. I’m guessing I have not hit the article limit yet.
Added in a summary from TLDRThis.