Running SCOTUS thread

The Murthy v. Missouri ruling is beyond disappointing — and downright frightening — if you're familiar with the facts of the case, which are acknowledged in the majority opinion. This was a pretty big First Amendment case and the Court dropped the ball on its importance.
The discovery in the case pretty well established all sorts of communication and coercion between the government and social media platforms to suppress speech. Yet the majority (it was a 6-3 vote) sided with the government by saying the states and plaintiffs lacked standing to sue, in part because while they might have been harmed in the past they hadn't proved they would be harmed going forward.
Then Barrett dropped this wonderful nugget in closing that makes you wonder what we're all even doing here:

Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch dissented, with Alito writing the dissent:

 

YIKES

 

Is it fair to say this case comes down to deciding what constitutes coercion?

 

Perhaps. The methods they were using to coerce the social media companies were slick enough so as to stay a step removed and create plausible deniability. For example, one government agency was using a non-profit to flag and report posts about the 2020 election, which were then shadow-banned by Twitter. If you squint, maybe you look at it that way and come to the conclusion that it was politely asking or a suggestion to censor posts about COVID and the election.
The facts of the case are pretty clear, though. A lot of it was first spelled out in the Twitter Files, and then backed up through depositions and discovery for this case, and the evidence is pretty damning. The SCOTUS majority seems to have chosen to ignore it and sided with the government on a legal technicality, and in doing so could encourage more of this bad behavior.

This was also the case in which, during oral arguments, Ketanji Brown Jackson expressed concern about "hamstringing" the federal government's ability to censor speech.

 

I have a feeling if it had been Murphy vs. Missouri instead, the decision would have been different.

 

Quack pro quack

 

Maybe not letting people have an unchecked ability to post whatever lies they want to isn't a free speech issue; it's a clear and present danger issue.
You want total free speech? Fine. When someone makes a post encouraging fools to drink aquarium cleaner or someone to go shoot up a random pizza place because Hollywood A Listers are have Satanic kiddie parties in the stockroom, the social media company itself is responsible for giving crazies a means to do so. It sure would be tough to track down the Russia bots doing it.
Traditional media outlets can be held accountable for publishing what they know to be lies. Just ask Fox.

 

Make Accepting Bribes Great Again

 

That one is really complicated.