Efforts by the government of President Joe Biden to curb misinformation on social media, especially on aspects of public health, have received a setback following the ruling of a Louisiana judge this week. The court has restrained Biden administration officials from reaching out to platforms such as Twitter and Google to pull down content deemed mischievous or false relating to Covid-19, or claiming that the 2020 Presidential election was flawed. In his ruling, District Judge Doughty said the government could not talk to social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”
While the Biden administration can still notify platforms about posts that detail crimes, national security threats or foreign interference in elections, the court granted the injunction sought by the plaintiffs, the attorneys-general of Louisiana and Montana, noting that the case involved “the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history.” The background to the proceedings in Louisiana is important. After the outbreak of the Covid pandemic, social media was inundated by content that questioned the existence of the virus, claimed the presence of dangerous technology in some face masks and offered miracle cures. Australian researchers found that in a space of one month late last year, nearly half a million tweets containing words such as “deep state”, “hoax” and “bioweapon” were posted. These drew 1.6 million likes and more than half a million retweets. Medical professionals struggled gamely to counter these claims but many gave up in the face of the deluge.
The Biden administration was forced to step in to reach out to platforms, but that has now been deemed an assault on free speech by the court. The absolutist views on free speech which some judges hold, and which are endorsed by Twitter under its new owner, Elon Musk, are almost unique to America. Most other jurisdictions have now come to realize there is a need to oversee social media content to ensure that egregious violations of the free speech right do not cause harm to society and individuals.
Europe and Australia, for instance, have put in place robust protocols to moderate content and to rein social media companies in. India is engaged in a widespread consultative process to regulate social media. It is clear now to many that notwithstanding its many virtues, social media can be used to both mold and manipulate thought. But finding a happy middle ground between speech and moderation is proving to be a challenge. With artificial intelligence-generated content now thrown into the mix, the waters get murkier. Judgments such as the one recently delivered in Louisiana do not help.