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Appeals Court Rules White House Overstepped First Amendment on Social Media (www.nytimes.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] Beetschnapps 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

The White House is a building, the trump admin did this.

Not the current administration, nor the previous admin before before trump. Similar issues came up during the bush admin.

[–] jerkbank 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that the Biden administration most likely overstepped the First Amendment by urging the major social media platforms to remove misleading or false content about the Covid-19 pandemic, partly upholding a lower court’s preliminary injunction in a victory for conservatives.

The bot summary skipped the first and most important paragraph.

Free Speech absolutism is fucking insane. You shouldn’t be able to have your voice amplified while saying demonstrably false statements. There’s a difference between a person being ignorant of the truth of what they’re saying, and protecting the company that chooses to ignore empirical evidence against the factuality of statements that are spreading on their platform. Why is libel/defamation only open to lawsuits if it harms someone’s ability to make a profit? Why is public safety or civil/political unrest not also a concern? Fucking capitalism.

[–] Beetschnapps 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Sorry I misphrased that. I do not believe the real overreach came from the Biden admin pushing to remove demonstrably false information that damages public health. The trump admin however:

“The attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, both Republicans, argued in a lawsuit filed last year that government agencies and officials — including some working in the administration of President Donald J. Trump — had abused their authority by coercing companies like Facebook, Twitter (now called X) and YouTube to silence critics.”

**That is different. **

Compare bush’s “free speech zones” or trump whining for twitter to delete any post calling him names vs removing harmful lies about vaccines, “child sexual abuse, human trafficking and other criminal activity…”

Hmm

[–] jerkbank 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I figured since you were being critical of Trump, we were on the same page. The bot skipping that first paragraph paints this whole story in a different light.

[–] Beetschnapps 1 points 1 year ago

It’s weird how mixed up it all is in the article itself.

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