July 4th injunction bars feds from encouraging social media to delete content | Hacker News Reader

July 4th injunction bars feds from encouraging social media to delete content

reason.com

66 pointshirundo30 comments

>However, various emails show Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits through evidence that the motivation of the NIAID Defendants was a “take down” of protected free speech. Dr. Francis Collins, in an email to Dr. Fauci told Fauci there needed to be a “quick and devastating take down” of the GBD—the result was exactly that.

What an utterly horrendous misrepresentation of this email by the judge, who seemingly edited it to fit his narrative. Here's the full sentence[0]:

>there needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don't see anything like that online yet - is it underway?

So clearly referring to 'takedown' in the sense of a published rebuttal, not an instruction to social media companies to remove content. Notice how he ommitted the word 'published' from his quote. This does not inspire confidence.

[0]https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/12/18/23/51969841-10324873...

Terrible. I fully oppose the anti-GBD side, but deceit like this repugnant.

It’s Judge Doughty in the Western District of Louisiana. Republicans go judge shopping specifically to get him, and he gives them what they want.

On appeal, his rulings don’t hold up too well…

Got an example?

The Covid-19 vaccine requirement for healthcare workers. Doughty issued the nationwide injunction, the Supreme Court overruled.

This comparison is laughably stark to say the least.

A person must either be genuinely ignorant or literally deranged to believe SCOTUS would rule against the 1st amendment in a case like this. Especially given:

1. The current make up of the court

2. The court's current track of rulings aligned with the Constitution

3. It ignores the entire landmark ruling of New York Times Co. v. United States which describes in explicit detail about how the people's 1st amendment rights ALWAYS trump the government's interest, except under extraordinary circumstances where there's a very clear and imminent gave danger that cannot be prevented. The example given in the case was something being published that endangers troops actively deployed in combat AND with no means to redraw them. Anything less is grounds for rightfully being condemned, ridiculed, and mocked for being a tyrannical psychopath, because that's what the court will be saying.

Here here.

That was a narrow 5-4 ruling. One overturned ruling hardly means this case has no merit. Do you have any counter-arguments to his 155 page ruling?

And he was confirmed by the Senate 98-0.

You asked for an example and you got one. I'm not sure what margins have to do with anything? If you're talking about those, he was nominated by a President who lost the popular vote by 3 million.

> Do you have any counter-arguments to his 155 page ruling?

This is dishonest and sealioning.

Why is it dishonest to ask if you have a substantive critique of the content of his ruling?

Because he has none.

link to actual document - https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...

That's a rollercoaster of a filing...

Choice quotes from the ruling:

https://innovationnation.blog/p/this-ruling-is-huge-155-page...

From part of the injunction:

  IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the following actions are NOT prohibited by this Preliminary Injunction:

  1. informing social-media companies of postings involving criminal activity or criminal conspiracies;

  2. contacting and/or notifying social-media companies of national security threats, extortion, or other threats posted on its platform;

etc.

I worry about that 2nd one creating a loophole. A lot of nefarious activity can be loosely justified as "for national security reasons." Why wouldn't the 1st set of actions be sufficient? Are there national security threats that aren't already criminalized?

You can organise a group in a very legal way, with a very nice and clear description, which is an obvious front for something illegal (allegedly).

I suspect the goal there is being able to stop/disrupt those groups without going all the way through the legal system.

> I suspect the goal there is being able to stop/disrupt those groups without going all the way through the legal system.

In other words: a loophole

A news agency may legally publish leaked classified documents. In the past, this has even applied to documents that could identify active agents in other countries. Though it's not criminal, social media may choose to not be a part of publishing that info after the government tells them what it contains.

>If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States' history.

Whatever your opinion on the wisdom or tyranny of government trying to control "misinformation" on private social media platforms, the above line shows the absolute ignorance of the judge.

Alien and Sedition Acts, Abrams v. United States come to mind.

Trying to steelman what he's maybe saying, it could be a question of scale. An unelected Federal executive "urging" (lol) private companies to manage content on their platforms in some defined manner has the potential for massive impact. I think that's the difference because there hasn't been a technology able to do that in the past. At least the Alien and Sedition Acts and the Espionage Act were acts of Congress, however misguided.

FBI couldn’t walk into NYTimes and ask them not to publish something? Of course they could, and I’m sure they have many times and I’m sure many times NYTimes told them “go fuck yourself, see you in court if you want.”

I don't see how that's at all relevant to what is in this case. That the FBI attempts to coerce media outlets and journalists, and has since its inception, is entirely unrelated to a bunch of bureaucrats coordinating approved narratives willingly with the private sector.

“Bureaucrats” and “coordinating” are nice wiggle words because they make your description 100% uninterpretable. It’s convenient because if you put meaningful words there instead, it’d be obvious how weak the complaint is.

The case is about government officials requesting content moderation and about private companies utilizing their First Amendment rights, at times to deny with government requests and at times to comply with government requests.

The government’s right to request content moderation is extremely, extremely well-established in the US. Private companies’ right — in almost all cases — to decline those requests is well established. Companies’ right not to be harassed by excessive requests or coerced by threat (implicit or explicit) is also well established.

This case is just making the argument that if a government requests action or brings a platform’s attention to some content, if the platform agrees with their request, acting on that request or notice would violate First Amendment rights of the people who posted the content.

Those two words mean what they mean. If you want to imagine in your own mind that they mean something different and pretend that it makes the statement "uninterpretable", it's a free country.

>This case is just making the argument that if a government requests action or brings a platform’s attention to some content, if the platform agrees with their request, acting on that request or notice would violate First Amendment rights of the people who posted the content.

The case is making the argument that the government crossed a line from "request" to "coercion" or "coordination", and that there should be limits on the latter. Overall this case is a good Rorschach test, because if you switched out the content for something more amenable a lot of people would immediately switch sides on this issue.

If the platforms agreed with the request and complied with it: coordination

If the platforms disagreed with the request and complied with it anyway: coercion (and the platforms themselves don't even have to claim they were coerced!)

So what this resolves to is: platforms cannot concur with a request or notice made by the government.

I don't think you can downplay how huge the scale of this was. It's a 155 page ruling destroying the federal government's actions.

Yeah the Red Lion v FCC citation seems a bit tenuous IMO, and what the entire thing relies on. The point about Red Lion was that there is limited spectrum and it’s controlled by the government, so it must impose neutrality or else the government has de facto control over speech. The problem was never that private broadcasters could choose to say what they wanted to say, it was that the government could choose which broadcasters could say whatever the broadcasters could say.

Not analogous to the internet at all?

I'm fine with this. It's a similar principal to separation of church and state. Reading the exact text has a provision for criminal activity.

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