Court case looks at allegations of government censorship re COVID

[Maphistos_Sidekick]

Saw this when doing my morning reading (should be a non-paywalled link):

https://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-to-decide-if-u-s-government-improperly-censored-social-media-users-2686fed0?st=vk0v25174nm5w2h&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

The plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden argue that White House and other government officials bullied social-media companies into suppressing disfavored views—including criticism of mask mandates and objections to Covid-19 vaccination for children—with veiled threats of new regulatory liabilities and antitrust enforcement.

The plaintiffs cite numerous email exchanges between White House officials and platform executives. In one email to Google employees from April 2021, the White House’s outgoing director of digital strategy, Rob Flaherty, charged that YouTube was “‘funneling’” people into vaccine hesitancy. “This is a concern that is shared at the highest (and I mean highest) levels of the WH,” he wrote.

The lawsuit alleges the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department’s Global Engagement Center and the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency colluded with social-media platforms “in hundreds of meetings about misinformation” and systematically flagged “huge quantities of First Amendment-protected speech to platforms for censorship.”

[Jasper07734]

Totally-not-misinformation investment tip: Apparently unvaccinated sperm will be the next gold or even Bitcoin. (I’m not interested in a deposit.)

[Jasper07734]

You can have a healthy skepticism of authority while still accepting science. Inconceivable to the anti-vax and pro-mandate crowds.

[The_President]

The article mentioned claims of veiled threats of new regulations against the social media companies, but the single example quoted does not at all seem like such a threat. “Stop this trending article or else we will fine you” would cross a line while “this trending article is hurting vaccination efforts” would not.

Jim Jordan and Rand Paul have beaten this one to death already in their public hearings and have never shown such evidence.