SCOTUS Rules That US Government Can Continue Talking to Social Media Companies

https://www.wired.com/story/scotus-us-government-talk-social-media-companies/

by jaredwiener • 2 years ago

19 46 2 years ago

wired.com

lesuorac7• 2 years ago

Actual Ruling: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-411_3dq3.pdf

otterley16• 2 years ago

Ugh. This headline sucks.

SCOTUS didn't rule anything of the sort; they didn't get to the merits of the case. They dismissed the claim for lack of standing:

"We begin--and end--with standing. At this stage, neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have established standing to seek an injunction against any defendant. We therefore lack jurisdiction to reach the merits of the dispute."

lesuorac7• 2 years ago

Except they did. This ruling removes the injection prohibiting the USG from talking to social media companies.

This detail is in the article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murthy_v._Missouri

sickofparadox• 2 years ago

It removes the injunction because they determined there wasn't standing, not because they affirmed the Executive's actions as legal. Those are two different things.

jjulius• 2 years ago

It's not a "ruling", it's a "refusal to hear the case", which effectively removes the injunction. They made no comment on the legality of the administration's actions.

Edit: jfc, lol @ the debate around whether or not to call it a "ruling". The government can continue to talk to social media companies for now regardless of whatever the hell you call it. I regret contributing to this lol.

drewrv3• 2 years ago

Standing is just an excuse to punt. Lack of standing did not stop them in 303 Creative v Elenis, nor did it stop them in Biden v Nebraska.

otterley16• 2 years ago

In 303 Creative, standing is discussed in Part I(B).

In Biden v. Nebraska, standing is exhaustively discussed in Part II.

snowwrestler2• 2 years ago

The headline is accurate, in that a Supreme Court ruling removed a constraint that was put in place by a lower court.

That fact that the basis of the ruling was standing does not change its practical effect. And that is what news readers are primarily interested in.

otterley16• 2 years ago

The article is from WIRED, not WSJ. (I often disagree with WSJ but at least their hard news headlines are less misleading.)

jcranmer2• 2 years ago

SCOTUS didn't rule anything of the sort; they didn't get to the merits of the case. They dismissed the claim for lack of standing:

Except that the lack of standing kind of necessarily implies the lack of merits. The allegations in the case where that the government improperly influenced the social media companies to suppress speech; the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that their speech was suppressed as a result of this improper influence, and by doing so, they failed to reach standing. But if their speech wasn't suppressed by government influence, then there's no influence to be improper in the first place!

If you actually go through the decision and read it through, including the footnotes, it's clear that the court is pretty skeptical of the actual merits as well. Only one of the plaintiffs was able to come close to showing government influence in their censorship, but that argument is pretty weak given that they were repeatedly censored before they alleged the government influence began!

otterley16• 2 years ago

the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that their speech was suppressed as a result of this improper influence

This isn't quite right and illustrates the subtleties involved in understanding these kinds of rulings.

When evaluating standing, courts don't determine whether any claims made are true or not. They simply evaluate whether a cognizable claim is made that, if true, would constitute a redressable injury that is traceable to actions of the defendants. According to the Court, the plaintiffs didn't make any such claims, and that's why the case was dismissed for lack of standing.

(Edited to remove a specific reference to the state plaintiffs.)

brookst2• 2 years ago

As another commenter noted, they did no such thing. They ruled that the plaintiffs have no standing to challenge the practice.

But how weird would it be if there was an industry segment the federal government was not allowed to talk to? The whole complaint seems like a thinly veiled attempt to say the federal government is not actually a government.

garyfirestorm• 2 years ago

basically saying the federal govt. shouldn't have an ability to communicate...

chatmasta2• 2 years ago

The complaint was about communication that coincides with implied threats or intimidation. The social media companies take down the alleged misinformation not because they want to, but “because of the implication” of what would happen if they did not.

For example, the executive branch might promote some legislation that would be damaging to social media companies, and at the same time, send them requests to take down some posts. The social media companies comply because they want to be in the good graces of the White House while negotiating on the legislation.

This is called “jawboning:” https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/informal-government-coe...

jauntywundrkind• 2 years ago

The whole complaint seems like a thinly veiled attempt to say the federal government is not actually a government.

Except with hard power! You can govern with hard power, but you can't talk to anyone.

It feels to me like a very thinly veiled attempt to sow distrust. To support a pre-constructed narrative that the government is out to get people. Feeling like the victim of government draws in a lot of votes, is one of the lowest common radicalizers available.

People are desperate to believe the US government is out there suppressing voices. There's a whole constructed reality that this is prevalent, happening en masse. There's just, like, hardly any evidence at all. Also weird as hell many of these same political factions blame Section 230, when it's expressly a shield allowing companies to host anything online without being in trouble, a defense against The Wolves of Wall Street bad guys Stratton Oakmont suppressing Prodigy.

It is inordinately hard for me to read any good faith in the outrage machine powering this all. There's a totally decoupled world of spin feeding this agenda, that seemingly doesn't need any connection to the real world to sustain & grow it's angst. And with remedies like "eliminate section 230" it's terrifying to imagine what all might be wrought by this persecution-delusion.

shadowgovt3• 2 years ago

So it continues to be the case that the most effective avenue to get one's message out is to host one's own message.

It's good to know the Fediverse at large (and Mastodon in particular) make this easier than ever. Perhaps this entire concern can be made moot by further adoption of decentralized technologies.

janalsncm• 2 years ago

I just run my own website. It’s the original decentralized web. If I need to, I can share links on social media but I always own the content.

otterley16• 2 years ago

This is consistent with the design and spirit of the Internet, and in my opinion is how it should be.

hughesjj• 2 years ago

Imo the best way to get your message out is to have a better message

SCOTUS Rules That US Government Can Continue Talking to Social Media Companies

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