Supreme Court To Decide Whether Government Can Ask Social Media To Please Not Spread Health Lies
But what about the sacred right to spread deadly disinformation?
The US Supreme Court will hear arguments next month in a case that may determine whether the US government can request that social media companies limit the spread of lies on their platforms, as the latest red-state lawsuit aimed at harming public health reaches the nation’s top court. The case, Murthy v. Missouri, claims that when federal health officials asked social media companies to take down lies about COVID-19, vaccines, or other public health measures, as well as about election disinformation, the government was infringing the liars’ free speech rights, because endangering people’s health by lying is an American tradition that is protected by the First Amendment.
The government contends that it hadn’t coerced the companies to act, but had merely brought misinformation to their attention and urged them to enforce their own terms of service, because there was kind of a public health emergency (and an attempted coup) and the lies could lead to people dying. (Which they did.) The government also points out that in many cases, its requests weren’t successful.
The lawsuit was initially brought by Missouri’s then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who’s now a US senator. Lucky Missouri! It was later joined by Louisiana, as well as by three doctors who signed the notorious pre-vaccine “infect everyone and let God sort ‘em out” Great Barrington Declaration, and by the Stupidest Man on the Internet, Jim Hoft, publisher of the Gateway Pundit lie factory, who has a vested interest in being able to lie loudly and often.
Also too, as STAT News points out, the lawsuit demanding that the government must never ask social media companies to remove dangerous health misinformation will be reaching the Supreme Court a little while after last week’s Senate hearing in which the heads of social media companies were yelled at by senators from both parties for not doing more to protect children from online dangers like bullying or posts extolling the joys of anorexia and bulimia. During the hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) demanded that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologize to families of kids who’ve been exploited or harmed by Facebook and Instagram, and Zuckerberg did.
STAT notes that
The recent hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which also called TikTok, Snap and Discord executives to testify, stands in stark contrast to the coronavirus misinformation lawsuit, as it conversely suggests tech companies aren’t doing enough to police their platforms.
Why yes, yes it does.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued in a filing in Murthy v. Missouri that if the Supreme Court decides that the government can’t “pressure” social media companies to do something about harmful speech, as a lower court held, then government would be prevented from calling out irresponsible practices by social media companies.
For instance, under that ruling, a White House statement condemning the role social media plays in teens’ mental health and calling for potential legislative reform “might be viewed as coercion or significant encouragement under the Fifth Circuit’s novel understanding of those concepts,” she wrote.
But that’s different, rightwingers will probably argue, because advocating for eating disorders — a real thing on a lot of social media followed by teens — is actually dangerous, while claiming that vaccines will kill you so your children should be free to get measles and die is benign free speech, since not everyone who gets measles dies, you see?
As the case has wended its way toward the Supreme Court, an initial district court ruling that the government can never contact social media companies about anything was whittled down by the Fifth Circuit, which held that it would be OK for, say, the CDC to advise the companies about new vaccine guidelines or even provide an explainer on true or false health facts, but as STAT points out, Justice Samuel Alito still seems to think that’s tyrannical, because won’t anyone think about the rights of liars? In a dissent to the majority’s order lifting a temporary ban on all contact from the government to social media companies, Alito fretted,
“At this time in the history of our country, what the Court has done, I fear, will be seen by some as giving the Government a green light to use heavy-handed tactics to skew the presentation of views on the medium that increasingly dominates the dissemination of news.”
Because after all, reality is just a matter of opinion, and who said that medical experts have any right to say that COVID isn’t caused by people having sex with demons?
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Yes, but in the 14th century there was no such thing as social media, so we can't possibly regulate this.
Helpful tip: When you are having sex with demons, the chances of catching COVID or any other disease is greatly reduced if you use a condemon.
Thank you, I'm here all week.