I think her comments make a little more sense in this version.
As I understand it, one of the Justices asked whether the same rules would apply to print media, for example, The New York Times. Perhaps the issue KBJ is trying to struggle with is whether there is something intrinsically different about social media, some different compelling government interest that is in play for, say, Facebook that is not in play for the NYT.
The response from Louisiana I find most interesting is that the person whose speech is being censored is not in the room when the government is talking to/coercing the social media host.
“You seem to be suggesting that that duty [to protect Americans] cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information,” Jackson. “So can you help me? Because I’m really worried about that. Because you’ve got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances, from the government’s perspective, and you’re saying that the government can’t interact with the source of those problems.”
As Aguiñaga explained, Our position is not that the government can[not] interact with the platforms there. They can and they should in certain circumstances like that, that present such dangerous issues for society and especially young people,” Aguiñaga said. “But the way they do that has to be in compliance with the First Amendment. And I think that means they can give them all the true information that the platform needs and ask to amplify that.
Indeed, and what seems grindingly obvious to this poor, dumb non-lawyer Texan, the best way--the constitutional way--to deal with false claims, or merely erroneous ones, regarding dangerous issues includes that, and it includes the government going ahead and posting retweets/reposts of the wrong material with replies attached containing what the government claims to be the correct information, together with the logic behind why it thinks the one is wrong and its claims are correct. To the extent the government's claims are believable, that would do far more to deprecate the credibility of the wrong information and the source of it than hiding the wrong information via censorship. That censorship, in fact, enhances the credibility of the censored information and its source.
And further, to do their jawboning, apart from their countervailing postings, in public.
It does sound like she's really worried that the government might have to obey some rules even when it's really important.
I wonder that they didn't compare it with the Third Amendment. Like, the government probably wouldn't even want to quarter troops in your house except in an emergency like an actual insurrection. Obviously this is exactly when these rules are meant to apply.
This kind of censorship seems to differ in kind from war-time censorship. In the latter you restrict the truth and add lies to manipulate enemies who you _know_ are trying to kill you. In the former you are trying to manipulate your own citizens away from something you _think_ is risky.
I can, of course, imagine a situation where a government would almost have a duty to suppress/distort information. Take as a ridiculous extreme a situation in which someone has figured out how to make a nuke from D-cells and peanut butter. We all know of people, maybe know them personally, who would try it out just for kicks, and some who would use the formula to satisfy a grudge, never mind who else died. (Whether trying to suppress the details would even work is a whole other question.)
Does erroneous information about a relatively mild disease rise to the level of an existential threat? (Yes, I had some friends die of it--and also of the flu. Compare it to adult measles in a naive population, or ebola, for real existential threats, please.) No doubt some will claim that climate change is an existential threat, but even if it were so, remediation measures aren't obvious and should be up for thorough debate. And for arranging for accountability.
I read a brief comment, IIRC on Instapundit, that to the reporter it seemed the hypotheticals posed during oral arguments were far too focused on safety issues of the sort james raised and which were not really part of the fact pattern of the original case.
I can tolerate the idea of suppressing true information on the ground of its danger, though I'm uneasy about it and not at all convinced it does any good in the long run. What the Biden admin is asking to do, however, is suppress information whose danger supposedly consists in its falsehood. Even if it were false, a judgment I'm not willing to leave to any government, particularly one operating in secrecy, the proper response to false information is true information, including facts and argument directed openly to citizens who are entitled to be treated with respect and must be allowed to reach their own conclusions. These creatures can stuff their thought crimes.
I realize courts adjudicate truth and falsehood in fraud, perjury, and defamation cases, but it's such a fraught practice that it explicitly excludes opinion. I'm losing patience with state apparatchiks who believe their opinion is unquestionable, no matter how convinced they are that we are in a Crisis and this is Really Important.
I believe what gets up the nose of power-mad bureaucrats is that people won't take their word in a swearing contest. They don't even have the confidence that consumers will believe official pronouncements from expert state websites over some lunacy they hear in a bar or read on Reddit. This partly reflects public gullibility, but when even the less gullible and better-educated part of the public starts disbelieving the state experts, the state ought to do a little soul-searching.
At present I respond to state pronouncements roughly the way I do to the latest urban legend on Facebook: I don't assume either one has an iota of truth in it until I learn something convincing from a source that hasn't completely lost my confidence. The assertion may turn out to have some truth in it, or it may not, but these clowns aren't moving my needle any more. Someone else will have to.
"At present I respond to state pronouncements roughly the way I do to the latest urban legend on Facebook: I don't assume either one has an iota of truth in it until I learn something convincing from a source that hasn't completely lost my confidence."
Yes. On another forum I was reading a vigorous debate on the tic tok kerfluffle. What struck me was not validity of the various arguments, but how trust in the gov. was absolutely GONE.
until I learn something convincing from a source that hasn't completely lost my confidence.
This goes to my preference for the actual analyses. The most plausible claim, based on actually published data, can be supported if the analysis of the data is done correctly, and that same claim can be tossed into the compost heap if the analysis was done incorrectly sloppily. Either one of those latter two destroys, in my mind, the credibility of the researcher, who should know better.
11 comments:
I hope her remarks look better in context.
A fuller transcript here:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/03/18/justice_ketanji_brown_jackson_first_amendment_hamstringing_federal_ability_to_respond_to_threatening_circumstances_from_the_governments_perspective.html
I think her comments make a little more sense in this version.
As I understand it, one of the Justices asked whether the same rules would apply to print media, for example, The New York Times. Perhaps the issue KBJ is trying to struggle with is whether there is something intrinsically different about social media, some different compelling government interest that is in play for, say, Facebook that is not in play for the NYT.
The response from Louisiana I find most interesting is that the person whose speech is being censored is not in the room when the government is talking to/coercing the social media host.
It's not any better with added context.
Here's some more, courtesy of The Federalist:
“You seem to be suggesting that that duty [to protect Americans] cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information,” Jackson. “So can you help me? Because I’m really worried about that. Because you’ve got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances, from the government’s perspective, and you’re saying that the government can’t interact with the source of those problems.”
As Aguiñaga explained, Our position is not that the government can[not] interact with the platforms there. They can and they should in certain circumstances like that, that present such dangerous issues for society and especially young people,” Aguiñaga said. “But the way they do that has to be in compliance with the First Amendment. And I think that means they can give them all the true information that the platform needs and ask to amplify that.
Indeed, and what seems grindingly obvious to this poor, dumb non-lawyer Texan, the best way--the constitutional way--to deal with false claims, or merely erroneous ones, regarding dangerous issues includes that, and it includes the government going ahead and posting retweets/reposts of the wrong material with replies attached containing what the government claims to be the correct information, together with the logic behind why it thinks the one is wrong and its claims are correct. To the extent the government's claims are believable, that would do far more to deprecate the credibility of the wrong information and the source of it than hiding the wrong information via censorship. That censorship, in fact, enhances the credibility of the censored information and its source.
And further, to do their jawboning, apart from their countervailing postings, in public.
Eric Hines
It does sound like she's really worried that the government might have to obey some rules even when it's really important.
I wonder that they didn't compare it with the Third Amendment. Like, the government probably wouldn't even want to quarter troops in your house except in an emergency like an actual insurrection. Obviously this is exactly when these rules are meant to apply.
This kind of censorship seems to differ in kind from war-time censorship. In the latter you restrict the truth and add lies to manipulate enemies who you _know_ are trying to kill you. In the former you are trying to manipulate your own citizens away from something you _think_ is risky.
I can, of course, imagine a situation where a government would almost have a duty to suppress/distort information. Take as a ridiculous extreme a situation in which someone has figured out how to make a nuke from D-cells and peanut butter. We all know of people, maybe know them personally, who would try it out just for kicks, and some who would use the formula to satisfy a grudge, never mind who else died. (Whether trying to suppress the details would even work is a whole other question.)
Does erroneous information about a relatively mild disease rise to the level of an existential threat? (Yes, I had some friends die of it--and also of the flu. Compare it to adult measles in a naive population, or ebola, for real existential threats, please.) No doubt some will claim that climate change is an existential threat, but even if it were so, remediation measures aren't obvious and should be up for thorough debate. And for arranging for accountability.
I read a brief comment, IIRC on Instapundit, that to the reporter it seemed the hypotheticals posed during oral arguments were far too focused on safety issues of the sort james raised and which were not really part of the fact pattern of the original case.
James writes semi-humorously, but I think is spot on. "You people don't understand that this is Really Important!"
Oh. Oh, Really Important? Well why didn't you say so?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2c9-LDP0t0
I think Eric nailed it.
I can tolerate the idea of suppressing true information on the ground of its danger, though I'm uneasy about it and not at all convinced it does any good in the long run. What the Biden admin is asking to do, however, is suppress information whose danger supposedly consists in its falsehood. Even if it were false, a judgment I'm not willing to leave to any government, particularly one operating in secrecy, the proper response to false information is true information, including facts and argument directed openly to citizens who are entitled to be treated with respect and must be allowed to reach their own conclusions. These creatures can stuff their thought crimes.
I realize courts adjudicate truth and falsehood in fraud, perjury, and defamation cases, but it's such a fraught practice that it explicitly excludes opinion. I'm losing patience with state apparatchiks who believe their opinion is unquestionable, no matter how convinced they are that we are in a Crisis and this is Really Important.
I believe what gets up the nose of power-mad bureaucrats is that people won't take their word in a swearing contest. They don't even have the confidence that consumers will believe official pronouncements from expert state websites over some lunacy they hear in a bar or read on Reddit. This partly reflects public gullibility, but when even the less gullible and better-educated part of the public starts disbelieving the state experts, the state ought to do a little soul-searching.
At present I respond to state pronouncements roughly the way I do to the latest urban legend on Facebook: I don't assume either one has an iota of truth in it until I learn something convincing from a source that hasn't completely lost my confidence. The assertion may turn out to have some truth in it, or it may not, but these clowns aren't moving my needle any more. Someone else will have to.
Texan 99 said
"At present I respond to state pronouncements roughly the way I do to the latest urban legend on Facebook: I don't assume either one has an iota of truth in it until I learn something convincing from a source that hasn't completely lost my confidence."
Yes. On another forum I was reading a vigorous debate on the tic tok kerfluffle. What struck me was not validity of the various arguments, but how trust in the gov. was absolutely GONE.
until I learn something convincing from a source that hasn't completely lost my confidence.
This goes to my preference for the actual analyses. The most plausible claim, based on actually published data, can be supported if the analysis of the data is done correctly, and that same claim can be tossed into the compost heap if the analysis was done incorrectly sloppily. Either one of those latter two destroys, in my mind, the credibility of the researcher, who should know better.
Eric Hines
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