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Supreme Court unanimously rules that public officials can be sued for blocking critics on social media
From LifeSiteNews
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett Justice noted that the personal social media accounts of public officials often present an ‘ambiguous’ status because they mix official announcements with personal content.
The United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Friday that government officials who post about work-related topics on their personal social media accounts can be held liable for violating the First Amendment rights of constituents by blocking their access or deleting their critical comments.
In a 15-page opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that the personal social media accounts of public officials often present an “ambiguous” status because they mix official announcements with personal content.
The court ruled in two cases where people were blocked after leaving critical comments on social media accounts of public officials.
The first case involved two elected members of a California school board — the Poway Unified School District Board of Trustees — who blocked concerned parents from their Facebook and Twitter accounts after leaving critical comments.
The court upheld the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said the board members had violated the parents’ free speech rights.
The second case before the court concerned James Freed, Port Huron, Michigan’s city manager who had blocked constituent Kevin Lindke from commenting on his Facebook page after deleting his remarks about the city’s COVID-19 pandemic policies.
Lindke believed that Freed had violated the First Amendment by doing so and sued Freed.
Freed maintained that he launched his Facebook page long before becoming a public official, arguing that most of the content on his account concerned family-related matters.
Justice Barrett explained:
Like millions of Americans, James Freed maintained a Facebook account on which he posted about a wide range of topics, including his family and his job. Like most of those Americans, Freed occasionally received unwelcome comments on his posts. In response, Freed took a step familiar to Facebook users: He deleted the comments and blocked those who made them.
For most people with a Facebook account, that would have been the end of it. But Kevin Lindke, one of the unwelcome commenters, sued Freed for violating his right to free speech. Because the First Amendment binds only the government, this claim is a nonstarter if Freed posted as a private citizen. Freed, however, is not only a private citizen but also the city manager of Port Huron, Michigan — and while Freed insists that his Facebook account was strictly personal, Lindke argues that Freed acted in his official capacity when he silenced Lindke’s speech.
Barrett concluded:
When a government official posts about job-related topics on social media, it can be difficult to tell whether the speech is official or private. We hold that such speech is attributable to the State only if the official (1) possessed actual authority to speak on the State’s behalf, and (2) purported to exercise that authority when he spoke on social media.
In the end, the high court sent Lindke’s case back to the Sixth Circuit Federal Appeals Court for a second look.
Perhaps reflecting continued ambiguity following the court’s ruling, both defendant Freed and plaintiff Lindke declared victory.
“I am very pleased with the outcome the justices came to,” Freed told ABC News in a statement. “The Court rejected the plaintiff’s appearance test and further refined a test for review by the Sixth Circuit. We are extremely confident we will prevail there once more.”
Lindke was more effusive and told ABC News that he was “ecstatic” with the court’s decision.
“A 9-0 decision is very decisive and is a clear indicator that public officials cannot hide behind personal social media accounts when discussing official business,” said Lindke.
Legal experts called attention to the persistence of gray area in the law regarding social media due to the narrowness of the court’s decision.
“This case doesn’t tell us much new about how to understand the liability of the 20 million people who work in local, state, administrative or federal government in the U.S. … just that the question is complicated,” Kate Klonick, an expert on online-platform regulation who teaches at St. John’s Law School, told The Washington Post.
Katie Fallow, senior counsel for the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told the Post that the court’s ruling does not sufficiently address public officials’ widespread use of personal “shadow accounts,” which constituents often perceive as official.
Fallow said the court was “right to hold that public officials can’t immunize themselves from First Amendment liability merely by using their personal accounts to conduct official business.”
We are disappointed, though, that the Court did not adopt the more practical test used by the majority of the courts of appeals, which appropriately balanced the free speech interests of public officials with those of the people who want to speak to them on their social media accounts.
According to The Hill, the Biden administration and a bipartisan group of 17 states and National Republican Senatorial Committee sided with officials, arguing in favor of their blocks, while the ACLU backed the cons
Friday’s ruling is only the first of several this term that deal with the relationship between government and social media.
“On Feb. 26, the justices heard argument[s] in a pair of challenges to controversial laws in Florida and Texas that seek to regulate large social-media companies,” explained Amy Howe on Scotusblog.com. “And on Monday the justices will hear oral arguments in a dispute alleging that the federal government violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media companies to remove false or misleading content. Decisions in those cases are expected by summer.”
Daily Caller
Suspect In Savage Knife Attack That Roiled Britain, Triggered Speech Crackdown Had Al-Qaida Manual At Home
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Nick Pope
The 18-year old suspect in a vicious July knife attack that left three young girls dead in the U.K. before triggering riots and a government crackdown on speech was in possession of an al-Qaida manual, according to Reuters.
Axel Rudakubana, who faces three murder charges and ten counts of attempted murder for the savage attack against a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, now faces additional charges for possessing an al-Qaida training guide and producing ricin, a highly toxic substance, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Large riots broke out across the country following the attack as rumors spread that the perpetrator was a migrant, a radical Muslim, or both, prompting the liberal British government to crack down on speech on the internet.
The riots that followed the vicious attack rocked the U.K. for several days, with outraged crowds surrounding mosques, burning cars and attacking a hotel known to host migrants, according to Reuters and The New York Times. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a member of the Labor Party, quickly attributed the unrest to “far-right thuggery.”
U.K. government officials subsequently warned people to “think before [they] post” and announced that law enforcement personnel would review social media platforms to look for speech deemed to be inflammatory and likely to spark violence.
Citizens were warned against “publishing or distributing material which is insulting or abusive which is intended to or likely to start racial hatred,” in the words of Stephen Parkinson, the director of public prosecutions of England and Wales. “So, if you retweet that, then you’re republishing that and then potentially you’re committing that offense [incitement to racial hatred].”
“We do have dedicated police officers who are scouring social media,” Parkinson added. “Their job is to look for this material, and then follow up with identification, arrests, and so forth.”
More than 1,000 people were arrested for their involvement in the riots, and more than 30 were arrested for social media posts that authorities claim fueled the rioting, according to the BBC. Of those arrested for social media activity, at least 17 faced criminal charges for their posts.
“These are telling details and are important for Rudakubana’s trial,” British conservative pundit Douglas Murray wrote of the new revelations about the materials in the suspect’s possession. “But the authorities must have known this months ago – indeed, within hours of getting into Rudakubana’s house – meaning that people who were heavily criticized for spreading ‘fake news’ about the potential motive of the attacker now turn out to have said something that seems likely to have been true.”
Censorship Industrial Complex
Joe Rogan Responds To YouTube Censorship of Trump Interview
From Reclaim The Net
Joe Rogan has accused YouTube of making it difficult for users to find his recent interview with former President Donald Trump, saying that the platform initially only displayed short clips from mainstream media instead of the full episode. Rogan sarcastically remarked on YouTube’s actions, saying, “I’m sure it was a mistake at YouTube where you couldn’t search for it. Yeah. I’m sure it was a mistake. It’s just a mistake.”
In episode 2200, Rogan explained that even though his team contacted YouTube multiple times, the episode remained difficult to find. X CEO Elon Musk intervened, contacting Spotify CEO Daniel Ek about the issue. (Spotify exclusively licenses The Joe Rogan Experience but allows the show on third-party platforms like YouTube.) Watch the video clip here. Rogan noted the explosive viewership once the content was available, with the episode racking up “six and a half million views on mine and eight plus million on his.”
Emphasizing the episode’s broad reach, Rogan expressed frustration with the initial suppression, stating, “You can’t suppress shit. It doesn’t work. This is the internet. This is 2024. People are going to realize what you’re doing.” He pointed to the significance of this episode’s reach, asking, “If one show has 36 million downloads in two days, like that’s not trending? Like what’s trending for you? Mr. Beast?” Describing the power of YouTube’s algorithmic influence, Rogan claimed the algorithm worked against the interview’s visibility, only showing clips instead of the full conversation. According to him, when YouTube initially fixed the issue, users had to enter highly specific keywords, like “Joe Rogan Trump interview,” to find the episode. Rogan argued that YouTube’s gatekeeping reflected an ideological stance, remarking, “They hate it because ideologically they’re opposed to the idea of him being more popular.” He suggested that major tech platforms, such as YouTube and Facebook, which hold significant influence, often push agendas that favor specific narratives, stating, “They didn’t like that this one was slipping away. And so they did something.” In a telling moment, Rogan noted the impact of the initial suppression, explaining how “the interactions…dropped off a cliff because people couldn’t find it.” He claimed that this caused viewers either to give up or settle for short clips, leading to a dip in views before the episode gained traction on Spotify and X. |
Since there's an issue with searching for this episode on YouTube here is the full podcast with Trump pic.twitter.com/sl2GTUaWdE
— Joe Rogan (@joerogan) October 29, 2024
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