As we’ve been telling you all afternoon, the Biden administration is under fire for comments made today about how they’re pressuring Facebook to censor users over alleged vaccine misinformation:
‘This doesn’t make it better’: Jen Psaki’s justifications for telling social media companies who to censor are beyond disturbing https://t.co/hM0C5wVnqO
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) July 16, 2021
But what’s funny about this is that today’s BS from Jen Psaki could actually help former President Trump’s lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter and other social media companies.
From the Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez:
(1) Quite apart from the merits, the White House should stop presuming to tell private companies how to moderate user speech. (2) On the merits, that’s an incredibly dumb idea on multiple levels. https://t.co/iw0i3FMtMe
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) July 16, 2021
Specifically: It assumes real identities are tied to accounts and/or massive sharing of personal user data between platforms. And it assumes it’s desirable for every online community to have the same standards of conduct, which apart from some very basic stuff, it is not.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) July 16, 2021
Trump: “Twitter and Facebook are state actors! They violated my rights! Waaaah!”
Every competent lawyer: LOL.
White House: “No, hang on, we can make this plausible…”
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) July 16, 2021
Government officials getting this involved in moderation decisions, apart from being inherently undesirable, really could backfire spectacularly. At some point that currently-stupid “state actor” argument becomes credible. And there’s no 1st Amendment “misinformation exception.”
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) July 16, 2021
Whoops.
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