Biden administration barred from having contact with social media over accusations of censorship.

 

Joe Biden. Politico/Getty.

The Biden Administration has been barred from having contact with social media over accusations of censorship. Politico. The preliminary injunction bars numerous officials and organizations, including the Justice Department and FBI from having any contact with social media for the purpose of discouraging or censoring constitutionally protected speech. The case was brought by the Louisiana government and accuses the Biden administration of colluding with social media to censor speech. Among the topics censored were criticism of vaccination and other Coronavirus related policy, criticism of the Biden administration, questioning of the 2020 election results and discussing the Hunter Biden laptop scandal. The judge also noted that it wasn't only conservatives being censored as Biden's chief 2024 Democrat rival, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was being censored as well. The injunction is likely to be appealed but will be in effect immediately. 

My Comment:

This is a huge, if temporary, victory for free speech rights in the United States. I have long argued that any censorship from tech companies that comes on behalf of a government official is an obvious violation of the 1st Amendment. The judge in this case clearly agrees with me. 

I have also said that Joe Biden would have not gotten anywhere near the White House if the media coverage of him was fair and the tech companies were a major factor in that. They censored the Hunter Biden scandal on the eve of the election. Had the story been allowed to trend naturally Biden would have never "won" the election.

This has gotten even worse since the election was over. Now, outside of Twitter and a few smaller websites like Gab, it's pretty impossible to discuss any of the issues mentioned in the article. My Facebook page for this blog is restricted because of this censorship, even though all I do there is post links to this blog and share my posts with my personal account. 

And it's clear that the censorship only goes against people that are in opposition to Joe Biden. RFK Jr. was the one Democrat who was mentioned to be censored and he's Biden's chief opponent. Talk about taking sides. Though I am not a fan of RFK Jr. (he's a gun grabber in favor of affirmative action) it's absurd that he and his supporters are being censored because he's a threat to Biden. Do I agree with him about vaccines? Mostly no, but he has every right under the constitution to make his arguments. 

The problem is that the upper executives of the major tech companies outside of Twitter are captured by the federal government regardless. And sometimes I wonder about Elon Musk, he does have a lot of links to the government after all. Either way, I think they will continue their censorship regime even without contact with the federal government. Plus, I fully expect the Biden administration to completely ignore the ruling in the first place. 

And there is always a chance that the 5th Circuit Court won't agree with this ruling. I am not sure on that, if I recall correctly the 5th is more conservative but you never know these days. My sincere hope is that the Biden administration gets taken to the cleaners by this lawsuit and is prevented from doing this kind of thing in the future.