[brasic]

Read the entire injunction. It’s only seven pages. Then tell me with a straight face that you think it’s a good thing for free speech.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...

It amounts to “no one from these 8 government agencies may communicate with anyone working at these three non profits, 20 social media companies or any similar organization”

I’m not defending the behavior alleged here but this judge is not the sort of person you want adjudicating serious issues. You don’t fight censorship with blanket bans on speech.

A supporter of free speech should be horrified by this ruling. If you’re not, imagine an injunction of similar scope where the political sides were reversed.

[AbrahamParangi]

I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government. Why on earth would I? The government is already massively constrained in what it can say and that’s entirely appropriate because the purpose of free speech is to protect the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree with them.

You may disagree with the ruling but if you’re on the side of free speech, you should definitely cheer it.

[evandale]

lol I gotta say I've been trying to read the defenders of this and take them seriously but your incredulity matches mine...

.. and people are replying to you and _still_ defending the government and think they should have unilateral power over their people

I'm kind of speechless about how many people think this ruling is a bad thing.. like who in the hell out there believes the government should have OPINIONS? Can one of you reply to me?

It's as stupid of a concept as a corporation having an opinion.. opinions are reserved for PEOPLE and I have no idea how you could come up with an argument to change my mind on that.

[afavour]

> It's as stupid of a concept as a corporation having an opinion.. opinions are reserved for PEOPLE and I have no idea how you could come up with an argument to change my mind on that.

I guess I don’t understand your point here unless we’re being ultra-literal and saying a corporation can’t have an opinion because it doesn’t have a physical brain developing individual thought.

An example of “corporate opinion” off the top of my head: Facebook is in favour of advertising. I guess it's just a shorthand for "the executive board and shareholders of Facebook share the collective view that advertising is good" but I don't think anyone is particularly confused about what is meant when someone says Facebook is favour of something.

[ipaddr]

Facebook is made up of many parts. Some parts find advertising to be directly opposite of their goals. The react team may not like ads being force in their docs for example. If own shares through a pension I may not like advertising.

The CEO decides who manages which roles and divides authority. Opinions comes from these power structures. They could be divided on issues or unified. They speak for the company.

Google is so big you often have conflicting goals from different power structures.

[afavour]

> Google is so big you often have conflicting goals from different power structures.

In that situation I'd say Google is conflicted on the topic. It's still not all that different from a human being, IMO, I can be internally conflicted on a topic and find it difficult to find an opinion that encompasses all of my thoughts.

I get that it's shorthand and euphemism but I don't think it's all that confusing.

[evandale]

> because it doesn’t have a physical brain developing individual thought.

You summed up my point with a single sentence I can agree with, can't argue there!

In your scenario what's the opinion Facebook has about advertising? I'm in favour of more bike lanes in my city but I don't consider that an opinion. Describing _why_ I'm in favour has an element of opinion but voting yes/no is not an opinion to me. Plus, any old why isn't good enough for an opinion. For instance, if Facebook says they're in favour of advertising because it helps them make money then I don't think I can consider that an opinion.

I suppose corporate slogans and mission statements are opinions (We believe the customer is always right) but it's hard for me to call that an opinion because are your values actually opinions? I would say that they can be formed using opinions but I would be reluctant to say they're opinions themselves because of the "strength" of them I guess?

[afavour]

OK, I guess we are being ultra-literal. Which is fine!

> I'm in favour of more bike lanes in my city but I don't consider that an opinion

...I do not understand why not. To my perception that is very much the definition of an opinion.

But anyway, we clearly have a bunch of different definitions in play here. I think we can safely agree to disagree.

[evandale]

It's not an opinion because IMO you need a why for an opinion. There's an implicit why most of the time. But Facebook supporting marketing because they make more money with marketing can be a verified fact - there's no opinion element in it and I don't think Facebook supporting marketing by itself is an opinion.

If you like rain because it waters your garden I'd hesitate to call that opinion because you have a factual reason.

If you like rain because it sounds pleasant that's an opinion.

If you like rain because it restores your chi it's (probably) an opinion.

I say governments and corporations can't have opinions for lots of reasons. One of them being they're not people, others that follow from that, like you need thoughts or feelings to have an opinion.

It just doesn't sit right with me having faceless entities publishing opinions because by definition opinions aren't based on facts and we have enough of a problem with regular people spreading misinformation.

[emodendroket]

Your conception of what constitutes an “opinion” is different than any other one I’ve ever encountered.

[evandale]

What's your conception of an opinion?

To me am opinion is a belief you have that's not based on facts.

Why do you want your government to have a belief not based on facts? Furthermore, why would you want the government to push this belief on its people?

Lastly why would you care about the opinion (remember: an opinion is a belief that isn't based on facts) of a corporation to the point that you'd defend their right to make statements that aren't factual?

[DropInIn]

It's pretty clear that your "reasoning" is based not in any logic but almost exclusively in your "feels"...

You just dislike corps and it's undermining every thought you have on this topic.

[evandale]

Mind telling me how it's clear that I dislike corporations?

I'll proudly admit I have no trust in corporations, but dislike is a little far. There's corporations I like but there's no corporations I trust.

[evandale]

If anyone reads this thread please see this comment: parent is not even trying to argue in good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36621860

[afavour]

Good grief, man.

[evandale]

Can you answer any of my questions? I think they are all pretty straightforward.

[backtoyoujim]

I mean if you can drone strike a citizen as president there is little left to have in the toolbox of "unilateral power over their people".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Abdulrahman_al-Awla...

[brightlancer]

> It's as stupid of a concept as a corporation having an opinion.. opinions are reserved for PEOPLE and I have no idea how you could come up with an argument to change my mind on that.

Well, I wouldn't presume to make you think, but _BY DEFINITION_ corporations are legal persons.

Corporation. Incorporate. Corporeal.

This is a legal definition, not biological or sociological or religious or whatever else.

And under that legal framework, the corporation can act as a person and enter into contracts, initiate lawsuits, be sued, be prosecuted, etc. And more basically, the corporation can make public statements which express the _opinion_ of the corporation.

Once folks set aside political bigotries, this shouldn't be a hard concept to understand.

[npunt]

FYI the purpose of an entire branch of government (judiciary) is to have opinions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_opinion

[brightlancer]

Judicial opinions != Personal opinions

It ain't the same ballpark. It ain't the same league. It ain't even the same freakin' sport.

Equating the two is like equating a sea sponge and a dish sponge. "Well, they're both sponges!"

[nobody9999]

>Equating the two is like equating a sea sponge and a dish sponge. "Well, they're both sponges!"

Actually, they can[0] be. In fact, I use sea sponges as dish sponges every single day.

[0] https://www.naturalbathbody.com/natural-sea-sponges/

[npunt]

Yes indeed, I was just being a bit cheeky given GP's other discussion of the definition of 'opinion' :)

[evandale]

Doesn't seem that cheeky from where I'm standing.

You admitted a judicial opinion is different from a personal opinion and you're making fun of my definition of a personal opinion? But you acknowledge a judicial opinion is different than a person opinion?

Why can't you extend that to a corporation? The "opinion" of a corporation or a judge is NOT the same as a personal opinion and there is a distinction that can/should be made. I'm not sure why you can agree with someone else that a judicial opinion is different than a personal opinion but when I say "not people opinions" are different from "people opinions" I'm wrong?

[evandale]

The judiciary branch is separate from the legislative branch and I was under the impression we were discussing the legislative branch of government.

[mc32]

All that needs to happen for those loyalists to change their mind, is to have the party governing to change to someone they disagree with. Then you will hear how the gov't is killing free speech (that would be a rightful complaint). But we all know what happened to Qwest communications when they declined the gov'ts offer to spy on citizens.

[lern_too_spel]

The platforms had a preexisting way to report ToS violations. The government made statements of fact about posts that violated those ToS. The platforms were free to act or not act on those reports.

[roflyear]

You can't think of a scenario where the government should be able to express a thought about something? ;)

[uLogMicheal]

The government has plenty of ways to express thoughts. Almost every agency has a podium with a room full of reporters waiting whenever they want to make a statement.

[JackFr]

For instance, if you're the FAA, you should express opinions about airline operations, air safety, etc. That is your role. If you are the FDA, you should express opinions about food and drug safety. And in both those cases note that you are a regulator, and within your domain, it is your role to regulate the players.

If you are the White House, you are not a regulator of anything. It is fine to express your opinion. In fact the White House has a daily press briefing for specifically that purpose. It is fine to call out people with whom you disagree. Perfectly OK to call them dangerous charlatans and liars. It is not OK to censor their speech. It is not OK use the implicit coercive force of the executive branch to encourage third parties to censor them.

It's not hard to understand.

[dragonwriter]

> If you are the White House, you are not a regulator of anything

If you are the White House, you are the ur-regulator of anything any part of the executive branch is a regulator of, as well as the things that the Executive Office of the President is the actual direct regulator of (which are mostly internal to government operations.)

[roflyear]

Man, people are being really rude here just for me asking a question.

[JackFr]

“Honest question bro!”

[roflyear]

Not what I meant at all. You're deciding to interpret things as bad faith.

[Auracle]

They have plenty of ways to do so without using intermediaries at social media companies.

[roflyear]

That's implying compelling speech which is not the discussion.

[cscurmudgeon]

The rights apply to people not the govt lol

Edit: Amazing, a perfect factual comment is downvoted.

[roflyear]

I'm just saying there are times where you may want the government to be able to express opinions....

[caseysoftware]

A government doesn't "express opinions" they "enact policy."

[cscurmudgeon]

Yeah, and no one is preventing that.

There is a diff between opinion and force/blackmail disguised as opinion.

"You have a fine shop here, would be a shame if it burned down".

Syntactically, it is an opinion. But it is not just an opinion if comes from a mobster.

[JackFr]

The daily White House press briefing is an excellent venue.

[roflyear]

I don't think that gives them all the avenues to express things that may be important.

[evandale]

No? What!? Name a scenario in which the government would put forth an opinion on something.. governments, like corporations, can't have opinions.

[roflyear]

Sure. "We think that info may put someone on our security team at risk, can you please take it down?"

[mc32]

Sure, in addition to all of their organs of dissemination, of which they have plenty of options, they can also have their own Twitter and Facebook accounts.

What they can’t do is ring up Twitter and Facebook and say, hey, that’s misinformation, do something about it. Or have government embeds giving guidance.

That’s hilariously very ayatollesque behavior!

[roflyear]

I don't think so. For example, if there is info on twitter that puts a government employee at risk, I think it's appropriate for someone to point that out to twitter.

[mc32]

Oh, like when Cops get doxxed, you mean?

[roflyear]

Not exactly, no.

[Brusco_RF]

They don't have enough channels to do that? They have to do it via veiled threat to a speech platform to delete users posts?

How can anyone defend this behavior? Just because it's your guy doing it? If Trump was telling Twitter to delete posts that hurt his re-election chances would you feel this same way?

[artificialLimbs]

Unbelievable that you're being downvoted at all. The authoritarian minded have definitely increased substantially as this site has become more popular and drawn increasingly larger crowds. When it was dominated by those capable of logic and reasoning and having some knowledge of the world, authoritarianism would get smacked down hard and rightfully so.

[roflyear]

I am sure you are just as illogical as other people - and it would be good for you to realize that!

Never did I say that I support governments. I was only asking what I thought (and was wrong about) was a positive provoking question.

[roflyear]

Not the context I was replying to.

[AbrahamParangi]

I am satisfied for the space of the government’s unenforceable opinions to be circumscribed.

[roflyear]

Which restrictions are you cool with?

[staticman2]

" I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government...the purpose of free speech is to protect the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree with them."

That doesn't sound right to me. You basically just argued "The purpose of a right to free speech is to protect the right of free speech." It's circular reasoning. Why should free speech be a right?

Out of curiosity I pulled up an article in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

One principle put out by John Stewart Mill is that free speech is valuable because it leads to the truth. If this is correct you should arguably be concerned if the government can't engage in it because we will all be lead away from the truth.

The article says "... arguments show that one of the main reasons for justifying free speech (political speech) is important, not for it's own sake but because it lets us exercise another important value (democracy)."

So if we accept this then if censoring the strong undermines democracy it could be bad, especially if they became strong because the weak elected them into office to represent them.

The article quotes someone who says "Speech, in short, is never a value in and of itself but is always produced with the precincts of some assumed conception of good."

In other words, don't argue free speech is good because free speech is good.

[dvt]

> That doesn't sound right to me. You basically just argued "The purpose of a right to free speech is to protect the right of free speech." It's circular reasoning. Why should free speech be a right?

That's not what GP argued, and you're being quite uncharitable. Their argument goes something like this:

    1) Free speech is meant to protect those that don't have a monopoly on speech 
    2) The government has a monopoly on—or can coerce—speech (because it taxes you, appoints the judges, has a police force, etc.)
    3) Therefore, protecting the free speech of the government is not really a stewardship of free speech

This argument makes sense and is not circular. The definition of free speech doesn't even come into play (and is in fact assumed to be desirable: after all, it's in the Bill of Rights.)

[staticman2]

" 1) Free speech is meant to protect those that don't have a monopoly on speech "

You lost me here.

How can the government have a monopoly on speech if we're talking about the government being prevented from saying things by a judge?

[dvt]

> How can the government have a monopoly on speech if we're talking about the government being prevented from saying things by a judge?

The judicial branch is supposed to be independent by design[1], so it's of the government, but not quite the government.

[1] https://judiciallearningcenter.org/judicial-independence/

[staticman2]

So the judicial branch is and is not quite the government, and the government has a mnonopoly on speech even though they can't say things, and I'm being uncharitable by finding this argument less than coherent. Got it.

[tdehnel]

From a constitutional perspective (which is the perspective Supreme Court Justices swear to have), the ability of the government to limit speech is not allowed. Full stop. Sources below.

First Amendment to the Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Constitutional Oath taken by all current Supreme Court Justices: "I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."

[staticman2]

"From a constitutional perspective (which is the perspective Supreme Court Justices swear to have), the ability of the government to limit speech is not allowed. Full stop. Sources below."

The Supreme court has never said anything like what you just typed in 200+ years of american history. Do you type this every day, constantly knashing you teeth at the existence of trade secret laws, copyright laws, libel laws, and the like, or does the rheteric come out in service of special goals?

[tdehnel]

Wow what a jerk. I'm going off the Constitutional Oath, which all judges take. Obviously they use judicial discretion but be charitable for a second and at least try to understand my point, which is that deviating from what the Constitution says is the very rare exception, not the rule.

[AbrahamParangi]

I think you misunderstand what I'm saying.

The spirit of free speech is to protect saying things that are either unpopular or inconvenient to the powerful. Speech that is popular or convenient to the powerful needs no such protection! Even in the most repressive states you can still praise the party or the dear leader.

The truths that we need free speech to find are not the congenial truths, but the inconvenient ones.

[staticman2]

Do you think that what is popular today will be popular tomorrow, so needs no defending?

[AbrahamParangi]

Yes, I do think that whoever is today's top dog doesn't need defending today. The alternative is just using power to crush the powerless which- I mean okay, that's a normal human reaction but I think it is beneath our aspirations as a country.

[jonny_eh]

It's also not free speech if it's only for some. The government is a very important player in our society, we depend on them being able to speak freely!

[AbrahamParangi]

I just don't understand how you can think this. If I profess my religion in a private capacity, that's a rightful exercise of my freedom of speech and religion.

If I profess those same beliefs while acting in a public capacity I am infringing on the rights of others by favoring or creating the impression of favoring a particular religion.

You individually have freedom of association. If you don't like gay people, or Vietnamese people, or MAGA republicans - ultimately nobody can make you be friends with them in your private life. However, acting in an official capacity you're absolutely obliged to be neutral.

The government very rightly has restrictions on how partial it can be as it is the arbiter of our society.

[aksss]

To be clear we’re not talking about the government speaking freely. They do so and with seeming impunity for bs relative to their position of authority.

We’re talking about the government coercively censoring speech of citizens in/on the media, not under emergency orders or commandeering, but as a matter of routine. Yes they’ve always done this even with the major news networks thirty or forty years ago (pre-Internet). It was wrong then just like it’s wrong now. It’s more visible and obvious now to more people, the evidence is right in front of us through leaks and email disclosures from efforts like the Twitter files.

[tdehnel]

They certainly can speak freely and any number of channels will pick up their statements and carry them without much critique.

But their right to free speech ends when they start to hurt citizens' rights to express themselves.

[ponow]

> Why should free speech be a right?

You cannot be serious.

[Spivak]

You're reading this wrong, they're not saying that free speech shouldn't be a right but that "free speech is important because it protects free speech" isn't very useful when trying to evaluate whether the government itself ought to also have or not have free speech protections.

Is free speech important solely because it protects you against a malicious government and therefore there's no issue at all with non-government entities censoring others' speech and no reason for the government itself to have it? Or is it important because the marketplace of ideas confers some societal benefit and it would be better if agents of the government were equal participants in that market?

[ifyoubuildit]

I think you might be reading something that's not there. Asking the question doesn't imply an answer. And it's probably better if people can answer it rigorously rather than just repeat the claim because everyone else does.

[halfjoking]

The government can say whatever they want in press conferences or through their social media. Both the government and their employees have as much free speech as they want - and not only that but they spent billions of dollars for advocacy groups especially during covid. (which we know now was used to promote fraudulent science)

The injunction says the government can't urge, pressure or encourage censorship. (yes everyone should read it). You have to be joking you think that is a bad thing.

[KennyBlanken]

> but they spent billions of dollars for advocacy groups especially during covid. (which we know now was used to promote fraudulent science)

....what.

[pohuing]

But they can't? Not according to this judge:

> Some of the statements that Doughty deemed to be coercion were made in public by Biden and other administration officials. "When asked about what his message was to social-media platforms when it came to COVID-19, President Biden stated: 'they're killing people. Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated and that—they're killing people,'" Doughty wrote.

[adfhbaidnioni]

This judge thinks that merely publishing information that other people believe constitutes censorship.

>Various social-media platforms changed their content-moderation policies to require suppression of content that was deemed false by CDC and led to vaccine hesitancy. The CDC became the “determiner of truth” for social-media platforms, deciding whether COVID-19 statements made on social media were true or false. And the CDC was aware it had become the “determiner of truth” for social-media platforms. If the CDC said a statement on social media was false, it was suppressed, in spite of alternative views. By telling social-media companies that posted content was false, the CDC Defendants knew the social-media company was going to suppress the posted content. The CDC Defendants thus likely “significantly encouraged” social-media companies to suppress free speech.

[halfjoking]

That is not anywhere in the injunction.

You are taking a statement about the climate created by overreaching government demands out of context. When a government repeatedly makes authoritarian demands, it causes widespread suppression outside the scope of the initial demands.

But that has nothing to do with the specifics of the injunction. Once again people should read it, and decide if anything in the injunction restricts legitimate government free speech. (it doesn’t)

[brasic]

Thank you. The real issue here is a small number of companies have become the defacto gatekeepers of a large amount of public discourse. That’s a major problem that this debate is just a symptom of.

[aksss]

It would be harder for the government to censor speech if their were more diverse venues for speech, yes.

But the real issue - the matter before the Court - is whether the government is abusing its power by directing the venues to stifle one type of speech and promote another. An injunction is issued when a judge deems the plaintiff likely to succeed on the merits, and the harm inflicted by the defendant’s actions in the meantime to not be redressable.

[shadowgovt]

And "people believe what they see on Twitter" isn't a problem the court can fix.

[curiousllama]

I post on Twitter "I'm gonna beat up anyone who disagrees with the CDC about vaccines!"

CDC views my post

Now, the CDC can't say anything about vaccines, because they know it'll be violently enforced.

The CDC ceases to exist because of my legal jiu jitsu

[CWuestefeld]

It amounts to “no one from these 8 government agencies may communicate with anyone working at these three non profits, 20 social media companies or any similar organization”

Except that it doesn't say that. It's quite clear that such communication is still perfectly fine when it's for normal gov't operations; I'll quote it below[1].

The folks objecting to this don't make much sense to me. The injunction forbids the gov't from doing the things that the plaintiff complains about. If the gov't isn't currently misbehaving, then the injunction is a No-Op: the government's claimed current state of doing nothing wrong will just continue as is (putatively) already is.

What is lost due to the injunction?

[1] Here are the exceptions to 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;

3. contacting and/or notifying social-media companies about criminal efforts to suppress voting, to provide illegal campaign contributions, of cyber-attacks against election infrastructure, or foreign attempts to influence elections;

4. informing social-media companies of threats that threaten the public safety or security of the United States;

5. exercising permissible public government speech promoting government policies or views on matters of public concern;

6. informing social-media companies of postings intending to mislead voters about voting requirements and procedures;

7. informing or communicating with social-media companies in an effort to detect, prevent, or mitigate malicious cyber activity;

communicating with social-media companies about deleting, removing, suppressing, or reducing posts on social-media platforms that are not protected free speech ….

[EDIT: fixed formatting]

[firstlink]

> The folks objecting to this don't make much sense to me. The injunction forbids the gov't from doing the things that the plaintiff complains about. If the gov't isn't currently misbehaving, then the injunction is a No-Op: the government's claimed current state of doing nothing wrong will just continue as is (putatively) already is.

The argument being pushed is "The government didn't do those things and it's a good thing that it did." Makes perfect sense to me, in the correct context about the ideology of those pushing it.

[stcroixx]

Free speech for citizens is important to me and I'm on no political side. This seems like a great thing to me. I don't want the government doing what they're been doing or doing it again in the future, regardless of who that government is. Ideally, these losers would have enough morals to police themselves or not do this in the first place, but here we are. Might not be a perfect ruling, but in spirit it's against gov. censorship, which I'm also against so I hope it or something like it sticks around.

[michaelmrose]

If the government says vaccine misinformation is killing thousands of people on air on the evening news and Facebook agrees and starts banning people posting it and those folks have to share their misinformation on their own sites rather than Facebook how has your freedom been infringed?

Likewise if the communique takes place via a memo.

You have a right to communicate what you please you don't have a right to have your thoughts carried by a particular site any more than you have a right to have them posted in the New York Times or relayed on Fox News.

[stcroixx]

The government has no authority to decide for me whether something is misinformation. They can share their opinions and I'll be the judge of what I trust. If Facebook reaches the same conclusion independently, without being coerced by the government, I'd react according to how I feel about the specific issue. Maybe I'd stop using the platform. I'm not claiming NYT or FB needs to publish my views, I don't expect that at all. What I don't want is the government telling them what they can and can't publish.

[revelio]

Yeah that works great up until the people who distribute memos act like Facebook, and then the people who sell you ink, and then the phone companies, and then ....

Really why is this so hard to understand. There's nothing special about tech firms in this story except the naivety of their executives, who have ended up looking like utter tools in this whole sorry charade. These idiots systematically suppressed discussion of the lab leak hypothesis for over a year and then once the Biden admin started taking it seriously decided, whoops, maybe it wasn't misinformation after all and stopped banning it. Twitter was systematically banning stuff even whilst expressing serious reservations internally because they knew the claims were true. Yet these firms are nonetheless still doing better than Google, at least Facebook and Twitter realized they were wrong in the end.

This thread seems to be full of FAANG employees desperately trying to come up with some reason why their employers are not in fact easily duped rubes who would sew the mouths of their own mothers shut if a 100% conflicted mid-level nobody at the CDC suggested it.

[stcroixx]

I think it’s very, very generous to excuse this behavior as that of naive rubes. These people are simply currying favor with those in power hoping for something in return.

[revelio]

You must be right that there's an element of that, but I still think most of it especially at the lower levels of the orgs is that these people genuinely have adopted the "if a civil servant says it, it must be true" way of thinking.

[lancesells]

I agree for the most part, but the only thing that keeps me wholesale from this is the idea that all social media posts are US citizens.

What if, and I'm not suggesting it is, 100% of the posts in question where from foreign actors looking to disrupt the US? Is the government in no way allowed to step in? Is that even censorship?

[stcroixx]

In my view that's to be expected and I'd want no intervention from the government at all. I would view that as censorship. Gov. is not there to decide for me which ideas are disruptive, I don't want them or anyone in that role. To those in power, any dissent could be spun as disruption to their agenda.

[DropInIn]

So your fine with a foreign power using bullying tactics to silence your fellow citizens, undermining thier right to free speech?

Because that's what you're actually arguing for.... And if you still support that position despite being informed of this fact, then I have to question exactly who You are working for....

[stcroixx]

Goal posts moved. I don't know anything about bullying - if that’s going on, prosecute that for what it is. Sounds like a possible law enforcement issue that needs to be investigated. I’ve worked at enough tech companies to know I don't want them trying to handle it. Freedom of speech is about protecting ideas you may hate and find utterly horrible.

And a big middle finger to you for that last dig there. My family fought in the American Revolution - worked for ourselves then and still do now.

[DropInIn]

Russian and Chinese troll farms...

Do I really need to say more?

They are engaged in active disinformation and harrassment campaigns funded directly by government.

Or are you being willfully daft?

And I then there's the Israeli and Iranian efforts, let alone the hundred other government funded agencies with thousands of agents whose sole purpose is to bully and intimidate.

[revelio]

By foreign actors do you just mean foreign people in general or something more specific. Because using the word "actors" give what you say an ominous overtone, but I can't figure out how it's not that you believe in some generic but wide ranging conspiracy of non-Americans to disrupt America with .... opinions. Those things that Americans are famously lacking and reluctant to espouse.

[didntcheck]

No. I don't trust a government trying to prevent me from seeing information outside our borders for my "safety". Banning receiving foreign broadcasts is a staple of authoritarian governments (I'm not saying it's a sufficient condition, but a non-authoritarian government would have no need or desire to)

[lelanthran]

> A supporter of free speech should be horrified by this ruling. If you’re not, imagine an injunction of similar scope where the political sides were reversed.

Governments don't get free speech. They get all sorts of restrictions on them that citizens don't.

[engineer_22]

-> Then tell me with a straight face that you think it’s a good thing for free speech.

I'm just curious, can you tell us what you take issue with?

[brasic]

It’s a blatantly illegal prior restraint on speech, completely at odds with the values the plaintiffs and judge claim to hold.

Free speech cuts both ways. If you’re pleased when a judge bans any and all communication among millions of citizens, you don’t actually value the first amendment, you’re just cheering a partisan victory.

[phpisthebest]

>>Free speech cuts both ways.

You have completely miss understood the purpose of the Constitution and the 1st amendment, the Constitution is the States and the People limiting the power and role of the federal government.

The 1st amendment DOES NOT bestow or grant the US Government any freedom of speech, in fact it specifically limits the US Governments freedom / power in many ways by baring it from actions and activities that curb the speech of the people of these united states.

To proclaim this ruling is "violating the rights of the government" is a complete and utter inversion of the how the constitution works, and the direction of power.

We the people...

[michaelmrose]

We are all "the people" even when acting in our official capacity as government employees. It also doesn't bestow shit. It says our rights are self evident and forbids the government, which includes the judiciary, from stomping on them.

[AbrahamParangi]

Yeah, no this just ain't so. You may in your personal devotion believe that Jesus Christ is Lord. If you say that in your private life, no problem. That's your freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

Now let's say you clock in to your job as Attorney General and you make it known that you think Christianity is the best and other religions are sad and misguided. Then we have a problem.

You have rights as an individual and you have official duties acting as the government but the government does not also receive your rights by proxy.

[michaelmrose]

You have a right to speak freely, duties you agree to abide by as an employee, laws you must follow, and an obligation to respect the constitution and the rights of citizens. The fact that you can't in your official capacity promote Jeebus means your conduct must not infringe on the rights of others not that you have no rights at all.

[tdehnel]

You're really mixed up here. This is the text of the 1st Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

When a person who works for the government is acting in their official capacity, they are the government. In that case the 1st Amendment prohibits them from abridging a private citizen's freedom of speech.

When that same person is acting as a private citizen, they are protected from their speech being abridged by the government.

People at work in their government jobs, using government equipment and email addresses, with government signatures are 100% the government, not private citizens.

[michaelmrose]

They don't cease to be people nor to have rights. How did you think all those cases go where a government employee sues the government for infringing on your rights. Judge: Sorry you aren't a person again until you clock out neeeext!.

[curiousllama]

I mean, I don't agree with the top level comment here, but this isn't a reverse-free-speech issue. Courts are absolutely free to restrain what public officials can say.

E.g., a regulator cannot say "if you don't burn this book, we'll tax you out of existence" while a person could say "if you don't burn this book, I'll vote to have you taxed out of existence"

[brasic]

A narrowly tailored prohibition on specific speech aimed at specific government officials may be permissable in some cases. This injunction is carelessly worded to apply to millions of people and to preclude essentially all communications related to "protected free speech". The breadth and vagueness is specifically what I'm objecting to.

[shkkmo]

Did you read the injunction? it isn't vague at all. The injunction only prohibits actions which should be illegal in the first place.

Can you name a specific action that you think this injunction prohibits or potentially prohibits that you think should be allowed?

[ch4s3]

There's a 5 part test laid out by the 9th circuit in Gibson v. Office of Attorney Gen related to speech rights of government employees. The government has broad latitude to restrict the speech that occurs in the course of a government employee's job, SCOTUS laid this out in Garcetti v. Ceballos. Moreover, this is an injunction related to the pending trial, and while judges can sometimes be a bit too aggressive for my taste there seems to be a compelling reason here.

[chipsa]

You seem to be under a misapprehension of how free speech works for the government: it doesn't. The government has no rights. It has powers. People have rights, including the right to freedom of speech. If the government is barred from doing something directly, they can't then try to do it indirectly by telling a third party to do it for them.

[Manuel_D]

> If you’re pleased when a judge bans any and all communication among millions of citizens, you don’t actually value the first amendment, you’re just cheering a partisan victory.

Except, that's not what's happening? The judge ordered the government not to contact a handful of companies, because it was coercing them into censoring speech it didn't like. A restraining order on a harasser is not a violation of the first amendment. This ruling is like putting a restraining order on an executive branch that was harassing companies into censoring speech.

[meragrin_]

> If you’re pleased when a judge bans any and all communication among millions of citizens, you don’t actually value the first amendment, you’re just cheering a partisan victory.

What? You seem very misinformed. Here's the ruling:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...

[1MachineElf]

It is very strange that this PDF omits pages 2-4. The full list of prohibited activities, plus additional context, was given on the Reason article posted here in Tuesday:

https://reason.com/volokh/2023/07/04/july-4-injunction-bars-...

[brasic]

I linked that in my original comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36616058

[meragrin_]

Perhaps read(or reread) it? There is literally nothing in there which "bans any and all communication among millions of citizens".

[brasic]

The targets of the injunction are the following agencies. The wording makes clear that all members of said agencies are in scope of the injunction:

HHS: 80,000

NIAID: 18,000

CDC: 11,000

Census Bureau: 5,000

FBI: 40,000 (double counted under DOJ)

DOJ: 115,000

CISA: 3000

DHS: 260,000

State Department: 14,000

Among the actions prohibited are communicating with "social media companies", defined in the injunction as including:

"Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat,TikTok, Sina Weibo, QQ, Telegram, Snapchat, Kuaishou, Qzone, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn, Quora, Discord, Twitch, Tumblr, Mastodon, and like companies."

That list, especially given the "like companies" part, includes easily several million people.

Also "Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group".

What makes a group "like" those orgs?

The prohibited topics and purposes of communication are incredibly vague, basically anything contrary to "protected free speech", which has no definition in the injunction and is famously tricky to define in US law.

This amounts to a blanket ban from where I'm sitting.

If I were a low level staffer at DHS this would arguably prohibit me from expressing opinions on this matter to a friend or spouse working at a social media company, for fear of, for example, "encouraging reduction of content posted with social-media companies containing protected free speech". The fact that that example is silly is precisely my point. Injunctions must be narrowly tailored to address the specific conduct at issue. This is so broad as to make a joke of the process and in doing so harms the free speech and rule of law that are at issue in this case.

[engineer_22]

Thanks! Good discussion follows this comment, thank you :)

[themgt]

The American elite's novel definition of "free speech" is that the bedrock foundation is the FBI's freedom to instruct social media conglomerates to delete the speech posted by US citizens and ban their accounts. If the government doesn't even have the freedom to tell trillion dollar companies who should be allowed to voice what opinions, the first amendment is dead paper.

[rhaway84773]

The injunction is ridiculous.

It basically says the govt cannot suppress protected free speech but it can suppress unprotected free speech.

Without ever explaining why the particular speech argued about by the plaintiffs is protected.

Maybe that’s fine for an injunction, but anyone drawing any conclusions about whether the govt suppressed protected free speech from this ruling is highly mistaken.

[somenameforme]

Speech is similar to our criminal system. When you're accused of a crime, you're innocent until proven guilty. And anything you say is "protected" unless it falls into one of an extremely narrow range of exceptions. And those exceptions are actual crimes, not just 'silently censor and move on' type stuff. So the injunction basically comes down to 'stop doing unconstitutional things' while offering a list of things that are obviously unconstitutional, and a list of things that are obviously fine.

So e.g. "urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech" is obviously unconstitutional. By contrast, "informing social-media companies of postings involving criminal activity or criminal conspiracies" is obviously perfectly constitutional.

[jtbayly]

No way.

The government is still entirely free to post its news, including on social media.

What it’s not allowed to do (at least temporarily) is tell to those organizations what speech it deems unacceptable from US citizens.

This is the entire purpose of the first amendment. This is a huge win for freedom of speech.

The government must not be doing this.

[Brusco_RF]

You aren't under the impression that the 1st amendment protects government speech, are you?

[HideousKojima]

I mean I've seen gun grabbers try and argue that the second amendment was meant to guarantee the right of the government to field an army, so it's certainly possible.

[aksss]

There are a lot of parallels there - people with a very pro-state bent try to invert what is meant by “the people” in the Constitution. It truly is a phenomenon in the gun rights debate. For decades we’ve heard that “the people” in 2A does not refer to individuals but the collective people, i.e. the government, despite such reasoning contradicting how the term is understood literally in every other amendment that uses it. But here we are watching the same rhetoric being applied to 1A. A misc. poster says this injunction infringes on the “rights” of the federal government because they’re people too. It takes a lot of chutzpah to turn this injunction into an argument that the Judiciary is suppressing the rights of the Executive. The humanity!

[ndr]

> It amounts to “no one from these 8 government agencies may communicate with anyone working at these three non profits, 20 social media companies or any similar organization”

That's plain false. From middle of page 5 there's the list of things explicitly not banned, it starts with "IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that the following actions are NOT prohibited by this Preliminary Injunction:".

[brasic]

Adding a list of carve outs doesn’t make the ban ok.

[ndr]

You wrote a false claim and are now changing the subject.

Which ban is not ok, specifically?

[brasic]

I’ve done nothing of the sort.

As I said throughout this thread, the injunction prohibits any communications based on a vague and subjective content or motive between a group of approx. 500,000 citizens who are US government employees and several million individuals worldwide who are employed by any of the named social media companies, nonprofits, or similar organizations.

This is not ok. If restrictions on speech are ever justified they have to be narrowly tailored in terms of content and substance, neither of which is true here.

[ndr]

Your claim summary is false, the ban is by no mean general.

Which of the following do you believe to be vague and subjective content, and which clause specifically are you opposed to? All of them?

[...] ARE HEREBY ENJOINED AND RESTRAINED from taking the following actions as to social-media companies:

(1) meeting with 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 posted on social-media platforms;

(2) specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;

(3) urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech;

(4) emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;

(5) collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content posted with social-media companies containing protected free speech;

(6) threatening, pressuring, or coercing social-media companies in any manner to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech;

(7) taking any action such as urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content protected by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution;

(8) following up with social-media companies to determine whether the social-media companies removed, deleted, suppressed, or reduced previous social-media postings containing protected free speech;

(9) requesting content reports from social-media companies detailing actions taken to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce content containing protected free speech; and

(10) notifying social-media companies to Be on The Lookout (“BOLO”) for postings containing protected free speech.

Source: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18...

[TurkishPoptart]

The list of individuals who work for the government are "hereby enjoined and restrained from taking the following actions a to social-media companies:....

(3)urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech; (4) emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;"

Yes, this is a victory for free speech. The aforementioned government officials don't need free speech; we, the taxpayers, do. The government officials have proven they cannot be trusted due to their maligning interests to collude with Big Tech to shill for Big Pharma products. I'm so grateful for some of these federal judges.

[lightedman]

You seem to be mistaken on what an injunction is.

This is not a direct ruling, it is an order to cease the current behavior (the gov't telling social media companies to censor speech) until it can be ascertained whether or not this is a harmful thing which is happening.

You're acting as if this injunction creates a law or sets some sort of precedent. It truly does not.

[brasic]

I know very well what an injunction is and does. You seem to be mistaken on what “law” is. It is by no means limited to statutory text or even final judicial opinions.

The fact that contempt of court is the only real penalty available for violating this injunction is exactly why it’s harmful. Making ludicrously broad and unenforceable injunctions like this inevitably corrodes the rule of law and damages the overall system.

[lightedman]

"You seem to be mistaken on what “law” is."

As the person that whipped Electronic Art's ass in court over the Spore DRM, no, I'm pretty well-aware of what 'law' is. And re-reading your post, again, you're still giving off the impression that this is some bad thing. It isn't.

It's literally the gov't telling the gov't to quit being a twerp while the courts actually figure out wtf is going on.

[Manuel_D]

I would be even more be supportive if the political sides were reversed. Imagine a Trump White House was threatening social media companies, and pressuring them to restrict posts on climate change, civil rights, or some other progressive cause. Why wouldn't I support it if the political sides were reversed?

The First Amendment doesn't just protect people from being imprisoned by the government for their speech. It also prohibits the government from pressuring or coercing private individuals and companies into censoring content. Otherwise, the government could just pressure private entities into doing whatever censorship they want. This isn't a ban on speech, this is a ban on government coercion.

[dragonwriter]

> It amounts to “no one from these 8 government agencies may communicate with anyone working at these three non profits, 20 social media companies or any similar organization”

No, it doesn't. See the exceptions on pp 5-6.

[hiidrew]

I couldn't find the list on my first skim. Then found in the footnotes, in case anyone is curious:

"2 “Social-media companies” include Facebook/Meta, Twitter, YouTube/Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, WeChat, TikTok, Sina Weibo, QQ, Telegram, Snapchat, Kuaishou, Qzone, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn, Quora, Discord, Twitch, Tumblr, Mastodon, and like companies"

[lost_tourist]

It's definitely overreach by an activist MAGA judge. It will be overturned within the next week or two, I'm sure that the judges in this circuit are shocked that one of their own would be guilty of such poor interpretation of the situation and trying to invoke absolute authority over the executive branch.

[megaman821]

Do blanket bans on speech usually have a large group of exceptions? Not to mention the government can use their official accounts to communicate whatever they want, they just need to refrain from asking companies to take down things (that aren't a threat to national security, etc) until this case in adjudicated.

[mc32]

The 1A grants the right to free speech to the people —people who do not have the force or threat of violence to coerce. It does not speak to the freedom a government has to communicate.

Besides, the government has its own organs at its disposal to communicate with the people.

[chr1]

Government agencies secretly communicating with people is not a free speech, There are many more cases when government employee can't talk about work with other people, so i don't see a reason to be horrified.

[whoknowswhat11]

What was the justification for the ban on the hunter Biden stories? Why not just issue a statement- the White House has a press office that could just deny things. They went around their messaging in an unusual way.

[xcrunner529]

There was no ban. The links from the “Twitter files” they the WH asked to be removed were all dick pics (you can confirm this via archive.org) which were a violation of the Twitter TOS.

[treeman79]

Washington is incredibly corrupt. There is no limits to what they will do to stop someone/anyone from trying to drain up the swamp.

Was shocking when my messages To friends on Facebook were being blocked.

1984 was meant to be a warning to the masses not a guide on how to oppress people.

[michaelmrose]

You said in your other post that the vaccine was gene therapy and that cheap treatments were effective. I'm presuming you either mean Hydroxychloroquine or horse paste. None of those statements are true and because of them countless people died. The statements are worthy of head shaking now. During the pandemic they constituted shouting fire in a crowded theater. They are fundamentally unworthy of protection.

[kolanos]

"Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a popular analogy for speech or actions whose principal purpose is to create panic, and in particular for speech or actions which may for that reason be thought to be outside the scope of free speech protections.

It was first used against a man in 1917 for giving an anti-war speech in Canton, Ohio. It was later popularized to charge people handing out anti-war flyers opposing the WWI draft with sedition.

It was later overturned in 1969, in which the Supreme Court held that "the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not permit a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action."

The fact that people still cite this analogy to argue for the abridgment of free speech 100 years later is truly disturbing.

[stuckinhell]

I had no clue about this at ALL, and I went to multiple top schools all the way from kindergarten !

Whoa

[michaelmrose]

I'm not ignorant of the history I merely disagree.

I think promoting what every educated person knows are provable falsehoods liable to cause the death of thousands during a public emergency ought to fall outside of free speech. There isn't some controversy about whether covid vaccines change your DNA or whether horse paste is an effective treatment that obviates the need to vaccinate. These are lies and every promoter of such lies has heard them denounced as such a hundred times thus it is willfully promoting what they reasonably ought to know are lies that they reasonably ought to know will lead to deaths. If they were promoting it during the pandemic they were doing so during a public health emergency.

That said the government isn't trying to prosecute they are trying to advise social media companies to stop boosting lies and hosting it. Let the dissenters get a mastodon if they want to share such.