If you listened to the government, you would believe that the operation went like this:
Social media companies couldn't handle all the moderation they had to do. They didn't want harmful "misinformation" or even *gasp* "malinformation" on their platforms. They kept identifying what they considered dangerous untrue posts that threatened the fabric of society. They even identified true posts that would scare others, and those were worse. People were discussing COVID vaccine side effects, and it started spreading. The social media companies were invested in ensuring that every American felt comfortable getting a shot in the arm, no matter the cost.
Understanding the platforms were overwhelmed, the government stepped in. They worked in tandem with Meta, Twitter, Google, etc., in a symbiotic relationship. The government just wanted to help, you see. So they set up a sprawling public/private conglomerate to act as these organizations' "Trust and Safety" department. After all, they couldn't handle it on their own, and the government wasn't doing anything but alerting social media companies when an unsuspecting citizen stepped out of line and posted wrongthink.
That is the line of garbage the government has force-fed to the media, congress, and the courts over the past year and some months as the Missouri v. Biden case has charged forward. They claimed it again as recently as last week as they filed their appeal to the temporary injunction Judge Terry Doughty slapped on them in the case.
The injunction prohibits them from doing the things listed above. Things like a halt to the practice of coercing, urging, or threatening social media companies to change their policies or remove content. It has carve-outs for everything else you would expect the government needs to do; investigating national security threats, crime, etc. The government is appealing the judge's request that it not threaten social media companies about censoring Americans.
You see, we have learned throughout the case in discovery provided BY THE GOVERNMENT that they were the ones directing social media companies on how to handle that pesky "misinformation" and "malinformation" we spoke about above. They would take it upon themselves to scour the internet for posts that went against the approved narrative and send them to social media platforms for action. They would then follow up with them to make sure they took action. If they didn't, they would pester and threaten them until they did. And, all the while and in front of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, they have maintained that their right to censor what they consider harmful speech is more important than YOUR right to say it. They did this while simultaneously claiming they never threatened anyone anywhere to do anything. It was all voluntary, you see.
They have gaslit the appellate court about what the order actually says, even though they can read it. They have pretended the order is a gag on THEIR right to speak rather than a prohibition that they do not deprive you of YOURS. They have done this consistently, but that all came to a screeching halt last week.
Jim Jordan released what he called the "Facebook Files." He subpoenaed Facebook and threatened its CEO with contempt, so they ponied up a bunch of emails. Wouldn't you know it?! Those emails not only gave hard evidence from the social media side of things that they were under pressure from the White House and other government agencies, but they also provided the side of the story we haven't seen yet- Facebook's side.
It turns out that Facebook had internal conversations about the adversarial relationship building with the White House. They also had internal discussions about the perceived consequences of their policy changes and their effect on the constitutional rights of their users—something that, until now, most of us assumed was a nonissue for them. We thought they clearly didn't care. They did. It seems the only platform that willingly and excitedly censored their users in tandem with government ideology was Google…
The bottom line? The government has been gaslighting the public and the judiciary for years about censorship. This brief set of emails gives us a different perspective than we have seen - that of the social media platforms themselves. The Biden administration and its associated bureaucracies are appealing an order that bars them from ONLY censorship activities. Not speech. Not warning people about fake news. Not telling people the proper time to vote or stopping a national emergency via information sharing. It doesn't stop them from working on getting child predators off of social media, although it is debatable that they do that very much anyway. It doesn't stop them from correcting the record at a press conference. All it does is stop them from threatening to destroy social media platforms if they don't censor or do as the government says.
They should be fine with that. It should be a nonissue. It isn't, and that tells you everything you need to know. It's game over for them, and the 5th circuit will almost definitely feel the same.
