Court to weigh curbs on Biden administration's contacts with social media firms
court on Thursday will weigh lifting a Louisiana judge's order limiting the Biden administration's ability to communicate with social media companies to urge them to moderate information it deems harmful or misleading. A three-judge panel of the conservative-leaning 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans is set to hear arguments in the administration's appeal of the judge's ruling, which found that the government wrongly pushed social media firms to suppress disfavored political views.
US District Judge Terry Doughty's July 4 ruling came at the request of Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri who claimed that conservative speech had been censored on social media platforms, particularly about COVID-19 policies. Doughty, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump, that officials under both Democratic President Joe Biden and Trump had effectively coerced social media companies to censor posts over concerns they would fuel vaccine hesitancy during the COVID-19 pandemic or upend elections.
He said those «Orwellian» efforts began in 2019 with officials asking social media companies such as Meta Platform's Facebook, Alphabet Inc-owned YouTube and Twitter, now know as X Corp, to limit the spread of posts they considered to be misinformation. Doughty said those actions led to the suppression of posts opposing vaccines, mask requirements and government-ordered lockdowns to combat COVID-19's spread and opposition to the validity of the 2020 election, which Biden won over Trump.
Read more on economictimes.indiatimes.com
