Appeals Court Is Skeptical Over Biden Administration’s Claims It Wasn’t Trying to Censor Social Media Platforms

If you’re tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. In what may come as a hard blow to the Biden administration, the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday, expressed doubt over the Democrats’ relentless attempts to reverse an order that significantly hampers their demand to social media behemoths for censoring content they label as “misinformation.” This comes following a lawsuit brought forward by the states of Louisiana and Missouri. The lawsuit alleges inappropriate use of power by the US officials in pressuring big-tech companies like Meta Platform’s Facebook, Alphabet’s YouTube, and X Corp’s Twitter, to censor posts regarding COVID-19, the 2020 election, and other topics. While Daniel Tenny, a US Department of Justice lawyer, in his defense, presented that the government merely “informed” these companies about misinformation-spreading posts but never coerced them into taking them down, the court seems to take a different view. Highlighting the unsettling intimacy between the government and Big Tech, Circuit Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod viewed the irate communication from officials to social media firms for not swiftly removing specific posts as an employer-employee power hierarchy. The sentiment was echoed by Circuit Judge Don Willett who argued that the government’s public threats towards social media platforms over legal immunity and antitrust enforcement were pressure tactics in disguise. Judge Elrod described the messages from officials as “irate” and pressured platforms that did not remove certain posts fast enough. Judge Elrod described it as similar to “a very close…Appeals Court Is Skeptical Over Biden Administration’s Claims It Wasn’t Trying to Censor Social Media Platforms