White House officials have been temporarily banned from meeting social media executives after a court found evidence they attempted to suppress free speech during the pandemic.
According to The Telegraph:
A judge backed claims that the US president’s administration, including the White House, had engaged in a “massive” attempt to stop Americans questioning the efficacy of vaccines online.
The injunction came after it was revealed last month that UK ministers set up a counter-disinformation unit, which was used to target lockdown critics and those questioning the mass vaccination of children.
The UK Government used an artificial intelligence firm to monitor social media sites and flag opposition to vaccine passports.
Prosecutors in the Republican states of Louisiana and Missouri brought the case and accused the federal government of being involved in a “censorship enterprise”.
They claimed that the Biden administration violated the First Amendment by trying to block social media users exercising their right to free speech.
Thousands of communications between government officials and technology companies during the pandemic have been collected and presented in the court case, which is known as Missouri v. Biden.
Judge Terry Doughty, who was appointed during the Donald Trump administration, issued an injunction which stops Mr Biden’s officials talking to social media companies about “protected speech”.
In his ruling, the judge banned government departments from contacting 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”.
A final ruling in the case has yet to be made by the judge.
In the injunction, he said that the attorneys general from Louisiana and Missouri had “produced evidence of a massive effort by defendants, from the White House to federal agencies, to suppress speech based on its content”.
Social media and other technology companies have in the past communicated regularly with the government, including during elections, and in the pandemic.
In his injunction, the judge said there could still be communication if the government needed to issue warnings about a national security or criminal threat.
Republicans have accused the Biden administration of “strongarming” technology companies to “shut down debate” during the pandemic.
In July 2021, Mr Biden claimed Facebook was “killing people” by spreading misinformation about coronavirus vaccines.
The evidence presented in the case includes an email sent in April 2021 by Rob Flaherty, the White House’s director of digital strategy, to Google officials.
In it, Mr Flaherty wrote that “YouTube is ‘funneling’ people into hesitance” about vaccines.
He said concern about it was “shared at the highest [and I mean highest] levels of the [White House]”.
Mr Flaherty, in his email, called for a “good-faith dialogue” between Google and the White House which would include meetings every two weeks.
There was no immediate comment on the injunction from the White House, Google or Facebook.
