CDC to Facebook: "Oh, behave!" - The Missouri Injunction
-
Inside the Facebook Files: Emails Reveal the CDC's Role in Silencing COVID-19 Dissent
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) played a direct role in policing permissible speech on social media throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Confidential emails obtained by Reason show that Facebook moderators were in constant contact with the CDC, and routinely asked government health officials to vet claims relating to the virus, mitigation efforts such as masks, and vaccines.
For a broader analysis of the federal government's pandemic-era efforts to suppress free speech—and whether they violated the First Amendment—see Reason's March 2023 cover story on the ramifications of these emails. This article provides screenshots of the emails themselves.
After Elon Musk took control of Twitter, he permitted several independent journalists to peruse the company's previous communications with the FBI, the CDC, the White House, and government officials elsewhere. These disclosures, which have become known as the Twitter Files, reveal that government bureaucrats put substantial pressure on Twitter to restrict alleged misinformation relating to elections, Hunter Biden, and COVID-19.
The Facebook Files, which were obtained by Reason as a result of the state of Missouri's lawsuit against the Biden administration, reveal that the CDC had substantial influence over what users were allowed to discuss on Meta's platforms: Facebook and Instagram.
The messages reveal an environment where the CDC kept tabs on Meta's moderation practices and regularly told the company what the agency wanted it to do.
-
Two days ago, a federal judge issued an injunction prohibiting the federal government from "encouraging" social media to censor on the basis of "misinformation."
Here are 25 instances where the government leaned on Twitter, Facebook, and others.
The Wall Street Journal: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-key-ruling-against-social-media-censorship-missouri-v-biden-government-covid-9b457364?mod=hp_opin_pos_1
Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction in Missouri v. Biden, which stands to become one of the most important free-speech cases in the nation’s history.
At stake is the federal government’s use of social-media platforms to censor Americans. Officials kept most of their censorship regime secret through two election cycles. Discovery in Missouri v. Biden, however, revealed extensive evidence of government coercion and encouragement of censorship. It is the most massive assault on free speech in the nation’s history.
Holding that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their First Amendment claims, Judge Doughty issued a preliminary injunction against eight federal agencies—including the Justice Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Also enjoined were many officials, including the surgeon general and a host of White House staffers. The judge barred them from (among other things) “threatening, pressuring, or coercing social-media companies in any manner to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech.”
The plaintiffs include two states, Missouri and Louisiana. Epidemiologists Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff are among the individual plaintiffs represented by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, where I am the CEO. They were co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which criticized Covid lockdowns. Four days after it was issued, Anthony Fauci and other government officials proposed a “take down” of it.
The government-orchestrated censorship involves monitoring billions of posts and suppressing millions. It targets speech about electoral politics, medical and scientific debates, foreign policy and more.
Judge Doughty observes that “the censorship alleged in this case almost exclusively targeted conservative speech.” That reveals “viewpoint discrimination,” which is distinctively suspect in First Amendment jurisprudence.
“The United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth,’ ” the judge writes. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has expanded its understanding of “infrastructure” to include “the spread of false and misleading information”—judged, naturally, by CISA. The agency asserts that the “most critical” infrastructure “is our ‘cognitive infrastructure.’ ” It views our minds as public property, to be protected through censorship.
Judge Doughty could have dismissed the case without an opportunity for discovery, as another judge did in another NCLA case, Changizi v. HHS, involving the same sort of censorship. Judge Doughty understood, however, that a largely secret censorship system can’t be evaluated under the First Amendment until after discovery.
The government will surely appeal in hope of preserving its censorial power over our “cognitive infrastructure.” So this isn’t the end of the censorship; it’s just the beginning of the end. But it’s important and well worth celebrating.
