The recent Supreme Court ruling on the case Murthy v Missouri (June 26), which struck down 2 lower court rulings banning Government interference with Big Tech social media platforms, is potentially a Free Speech disaster, if it isn’t already. The evidence is overwhelming (see the “Twitter Files”) that Government agencies and their proxies violated the First Amendment protection of Free Speech by regularly suggesting to these social media platforms (Facebook in particular was the focus of this case) what posts should be taken down, thus unconstitutionally meddling in the platforms’ “content moderation” processes.
These social media giants (Facebook, Twitter/X, YouTube and the like) already have Censorship Regimes in place. However, what is notable and most problematic about the Government’s interference is that the Government, through its various “alphabet agencies” (FBI and CDC, principally) is literally “ruling the airwaves,” as it were, a hallmark of authoritarian regimes: Big Government as Big Brother.
We all know that “legacy” media are little more than mouthpieces for Government policy, both foreign and domestic; their “news” is filtered through that lens. The Internet, by contrast, has been a Wild West of words and opinions—at least that was the promise of the Internet. However, in the Government’s eyes, the Internet has increasingly come to be seen as an arena of what it labels “mis-or-disinformation” under the pretext that the spreading of “false narratives threatens” National Security, Public Health, and the like. My understanding is that the Covid Regime policies and on-line doubts about the integrity of the 2020 election were the primary points of focus by the complainants in Murthy v Missouri. In effect, the Supreme Court’s ruling justifies the Government’s ability to enforce its own policy narratives by coercing Big social media to curb and delete Speech that it deems contrary, thus dangerous, to official policy, wildly overstepping its constitutional authority.
Which raises the question: Who is the Government to determine what constitutes “mis-or-disinformation,” already bogus categories, in the Internet realm? The Covid Regime, for example, promoted many false narratives which were taken as de facto Law, and people like Dr Jay Bhattacharya who questioned those narratives were singled out for silencing on the Web, although it’s quite obvious today that his skepticism about lockdowns in particular has proven quite correct, with the obvious conclusion that it was the Government itself that was spreading what it labels “misinformation.” Oh, the irony of it all!
The problem going forward with the Court’s ruling in this case is that it sets a precedent for throttling smaller, independent media outlets at the Government’s whim, which is the next step. Substack is the only platform that I’m on, and Substack exists (for the time being) outside the realm of Government regulation. You can write anything you like on Substack, and people will read it or they won’t, so freedom of expression is protected on this platform; they call it the Free Market of Ideas and Opinions, and the people decide, not some alphabet agency bureaucrat, which is how it should be. The Big Tech platforms, by contrast, are subject to Government regulation, so the Government already has a Big Hand in how those platforms police their content. As Murthy v Missouri and the Twitter Files clearly show, the Government has abused its power over the Big Boys with the widest audiences by interfering, through coercive suggestion, with their own nominally “private” “content moderation” schemes. The effect, or intent, is to restrict the information space, narrowing the guardrails of acceptable public discourse, which means acceptable to the Government—a form of legislating outside the bounds of the First Amendment, which the Supreme Court, a very undemocratic institution, has upheld.
The future of Free Speech is with independent social media, clearly. It remains to be seen how long this situation will last, and what the consequences of the Supreme Court’s ruling will be. The moral of the story: Support independent media!
A major blow to American Democracy! Get ready for the next "KING" to arrive....I can't wait!