On July 4, a Louisiana federal judge ruled that the Biden administration could not quietly contact social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to remove protected free speech.
Some saw this as bad news for the removal of “misinformation” or, in the words of The New York Times, government “efforts to combat false and misleading narratives.”
We say: The judge, who shrewdly issued his ruling on Independence Day, was right.
Government should not be in the business of censoring what Americans have to say on their social media platforms.
Much of this brouhaha dates to the COVID-19 crisis, a challenging period for free-speech advocates and an emboldening era for those public health officials who argued the need for consistent messaging as a tool for saving lives. Those officials quickly realized that vaccine skeptics, lockdown protesters and other dissenters were muddying the waters on social media platforms, and they were concerned that what they saw as “misinformation” would only worsen the crisis.