Judge Orders Biden Officials to Limit Contact With Social-Media Companies – WSJ:
“[T]he evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario,” wrote Doughty, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, in his ruling. “During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”
We know, because it’s been slowly disclosed over the past year or two, that social media companies maintain offices which directly communicate with the government, and we know that the government has, in a number of cases, asked social media to censor topics ranging from questions about the relative safety of vaccines in certain population groups to getting the New York Post kicked off Twitter for running articles about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which the government assured Twitter was a “Russian disinformation campaign.”
These may not have been as well known with prior cases.
But that’s the thing: if the government cannot directly do a thing, because it violates the constitutional rights of the citizens of this country, the government cannot indirectly do a thing by getting a proxy to step in in the government’s stead.