Judge rules White House pressured social networks to “suppress free speech”

Re:Judge rules White House pressured social networks to “sup... by somenameforme on Thursday July 06, 2023 @11:33AM (#36617606)

You're speaking of the difference between constitutional literalism, and constitutional intent. The 2nd Amendment, interpreted literally, means I should be able to build a nuke. After all there are no explicit limits. That obviously was not the intent of the amendment by any stretch of the imagination. Such a consideration was never dealt with because this was simply outside any sort of world the Founding Fathers could have imagined.

So too here with the 1st amendment. Interpreted literally, you're absolutely correct. Intimidation isn't passing a law, but obviously the government using threats to censor billions of people (since this would expand even beyond the US) is obviously contrary to every single reasonable interpretation of the 1st Amendment. Again a world where the government even could censor billions of people using intimidation alone is something the Founding Fathers could never have even begun to imagine.

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Re:Judge rules White House pressured social networks to “sup... by snowwrestler on Thursday July 06, 2023 @11:52AM (#36617886)

You’re arguing the obvious and easy part. It’s fully settled law that intimidation can violate the First Amendment.

But under current law, intimidation must be proven (there must be an actual threat). The core question here is whether any statement, request, or demand by a federal official will be treated, by default, as intimidation under the law.

If upheld, such a standard would be a radical redefinition of the interactions between the federal government and private sector, and have some very weird and unexpected side effects.

For example, political speech is usually the most protected, but this standard would constrain tons of it. Imagine if the communications officer of a sitting Senator could get prosecuted because they asked a newspaper to alter a story they did not like. Something that happens almost every day in DC.

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Re:Judge rules White House pressured social networks to “sup... by brightlancer on Thursday July 06, 2023 @04:46PM (#36622730)

> Imagine if the communications officer of a sitting Senator could get prosecuted because they asked a newspaper to alter a story they did not like.

Stop it, you're turning me on.

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