US Supreme Court examines Biden’s attempt to curb online disinformation

The Supreme Court of USA listen this Monday to the arguments in a case about the efforts of the president’s government Joe Biden to stop online misinformation.

Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri filed a lawsuit alleging that government officials went too far in their efforts to combat misinformation about vaccines and elections.

Last year, a lower court restricted the ability of some government officials and agencies to interact with social media companies to moderate their content.

The ruling was a victory for conservatives who allege that the government pressured or colluded with platforms like Facebook and Twitter to censor right-wing content under the pretext of fighting misinformation.

The order applied to a number of agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the State Department and the Department of Justice, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The decision prevented agencies and officials from meeting with social media companies or reporting content supposedly protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution on free speech.

Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry accused officials of trying to “dictate what Americans can and cannot say on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other platforms about Covid-19, the election, criticism of the government and more.”

The order could limit the ability of major government agencies to notify platforms about hateful or false content.

But the ruling allows the government to notify platforms of content about criminal activity, threats to national security and foreign attempts to influence elections.

In addition to interactions with social media companies, the ruling also restricted agencies “collaborate, coordinate and associate” with groups like the Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of research institutions tackling lies about elections.

Some experts on disinformation and the First Amendment criticized the ruling, believing that authorities need to find a balance between, on the one hand, denouncing lies and, on the other, censoring content or restricting freedom of expression.

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