Another Trump-appointed judge is out here undermining democracy this week with a troubling motion that will prevent Biden administration employees and agencies from fighting the spread of false information on social media. NPR reports that U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a staunch conservative, issued a preliminary injunction banning multiple government officials from communicating with social media companies with the intent to mark or take down “content containing protected free speech.”
Why is this such a big deal? The injunction supports the Republican and Trumpian argument that conservatives are being discriminated against online for sharing “alternative facts” (i.e., lies) on social media—such as that COVID vaccines are actually causing the disease or that Biden stole the 2020 presidential election. These bad actors claim to have been targeted or “censored” on social media with urging from public officials.
Now, federal agencies are blocked from urging these platforms to do anything to remove or label false or misleading content. For an example of real-life circumstances, we can look to the Democrats’ push in and around 2020 for Facebook and Twitter to curtail the wildfire spread of disinformation among users, like dangerously false info about the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as malicious lies about Democrats stealing votes from Trump in the election—which, in part, lead to the literal insurrection on January 6, 2021.
Judge Doughty’s order is part of a lawsuit alleging that conservative free speech has been censored on major online platforms like Facebook and Twitter, using the claim that the Biden administration pressured social media to delete content that was damning for the president’s son, Hunter Biden, among other examples.
The Justice Department filed a notice that it will appeal the ruling. And on July 6, CNN quoted a White House official’s defense of the administration’s attempt to curtail misinformation online when it’s dangerous, arguing that the government “has promoted responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections.” The spokesperson said, “Our consistent view remains that social media platforms have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects their platforms are having on the American people, but make independent choices about the information they present.”
This news comes right after an overwhelming series of troubling Supreme Court rulings that amount to major setbacks in the state of human rights in the U.S., including significant blows to BIPOC students via affirmative action, student debt forgiveness, and LGBTQ rights. All these gut-wrenching verdicts were made possible by the current six-to-three conservative-to-liberal justice ratio made possible by Trump appointing both Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett during his one-term presidency.
(via NPR, featured image: Matt Cardy, Getty Images)
