Africa News Quick

As we’ve been telling you all afternoon, the Biden administration is under fire for comments made today about how they are pressuring Facebook to censor users for alleged vaccine misinformation:

‘This Doesn’t Make It Better’: Jen Psaki’s Justifications For Telling Social Media Companies Who To Censor Are More Than Disturbing https://t.co/hM0C5wVnqO

– Team Twitchy (@TwitchyTeam) July 16, 2021

But the funny thing about this is that Jen Psaki’s BS today could help in former President Trump’s lawsuit against Facebook, Twitter, and other social media companies.

From Julián Sánchez of the Cato Institute:

(1) Merits aside, the White House should stop bragging about telling private companies how to moderate user discourse. (2) Deep down, it’s an incredibly silly idea on several levels. https://t.co/iw0i3FMtMe

– Julián Sánchez (@normativo) July 16, 2021

Specifically: It is assumed that the real identities are linked to accounts and / or the massive exchange of personal data of users between platforms. And it assumes that it is desirable that all online communities have the same standards of conduct, which, apart from some very basic things, they do not.

– Julián Sánchez (@normativo) July 16, 2021

Trump: “Twitter and Facebook are state actors! They violated my rights! Waaaah! “

Every competent lawyer: LOL.

White House: “No wait, we can make this plausible …”

– Julián Sánchez (@normativo) July 16, 2021

Government officials who involve this in moderation decisions, as well as being inherently undesirable, could actually backfire in spectacular fashion. At some point, that currently stupid “state actor” argument becomes credible. And there is no “disinformation exception” to the First Amendment.

– Julián Sánchez (@normativo) July 16, 2021

Whoops!

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