A federal appeals court on July 14 paused a lower court judge’s order that had blocked much of the Biden administration from talking to social media sites about content.The initial ruling, by Judge Terry A. Doughty of U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, found plaintiffs were likely to be able to prove that the Biden administration engaged in an illegal effort to silence speech on the social media platforms. The subsequent ruling from the 5th U.S.
Those claims refer mostly to content about election information, COVID-19 vaccines, and related public health responses that Biden administration officials urged social media companies to remove or demote. The attorneys general claim that those requests in the context of efforts to reform or eliminate the social media app’s liability shield, known as Section 230, constitute an unconstitutional threat.
Specifically, those entities were barred from contacting firms with the aim of removing or demoting third-party content that is “protected free speech posted on social-media platforms.” The preliminary injunction also banned those named from collaborating with outside groups for the same purpose, requesting information about a platform’s content moderation activities, and notifying those companies about content to be on the lookout for generally.
Daphne Keller, platform regulation director for the Standard Cyber Policy Center, tweeted that the judge in the initial decision “thinks he can protect ‘free expression’ while leaving the govt free to restrict content he personally considers bad or dangerous.”