Supreme Cowards

The Censors Get a Blank Check

The history of internet censorship in the United States — chronicled regularly in this space since 2018 — has taken a very dark turn.

Yesterday the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Biden administration in the landmark case Murthy v. Missouri, aka Missouri v. Biden.

Thus, the various three-letter agencies of the federal government can carry on with strongarm tactics against the social media giants — with emails like, “Wanted to flag the below tweet and am wondering if we can get moving on having it removed ASAP.”

Or this: “We are gravely concerned that your service is one of the top drivers of vaccine hesitancy — period,” said a March 2021 email from White House aide Rob Flaherty to an unnamed contact at Facebook. “We want to know how we can help, and we want to know that you’re not playing a shell game with us when we ask you what is going on.”

No, nothing coercive about that at all, is there?

By and large, the corporate media’s framing of this decision has been absolutely revolting. Here’s CNN…

Because who could possibly oppose the removal of disinformation, right?

Of course the correct framing — the one that will inform this single-topic edition of our 5 Bullets — is that no government body should act as the arbiter of truth.

➢ For whatever it’s worth, the decision was 6-3. Two of the three Trump appointees sided with the majority — something to think about the next time someone says YOU HAVE TO VOTE REPUBLICAN BECAUSE SUPREME COURT APPOINTMENTS ARE SO IMPORTANT DURRRR…

Online Censorship and “Financial Deplatforming”

Before we go any further, a reminder of why this topic is relevant to our money-and-markets beat.

For one thing, the government’s pressure tactics have cowed social media firms into toeing the government line — even when it comes to something as prosaic as the opinions of regular folks about the economy.

In 2022, Meta’s Instagram restricted access to a post by streamer Graham Allen suggesting a recession was underway based on one of the traditional definitions of a recession — two consecutive quarters of declining GDP. As it happens, the Biden administration was taking issue with that definition at the time.

Where does it end? We got a hint during the weekend in 2023 when Silicon Valley Bank was going under. On a Sunday night conference call, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) asked the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department and FDIC how they could exercise social-media censorship to prevent a run on the banks.

Meanwhile, YouTube demonetizes the accounts of people who speak out too forcefully against Washington’s intervention in the Russia-Ukraine war. And payment platforms like PayPal and Venmo cancel their accounts.

One of PayPal’s founding executives, David Sacks, saw the slippery slope even before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022: “As with the censorship of speech, financial deplatforming often begins as something that seems narrow and reasonable — who wouldn’t want to ban the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys? But once the power is granted, it metastasizes into widespread use.”

Back to the decision itself…

The Justices’ Cop-Out

Strictly speaking, the Supreme Court punted on making any decision at all in the case. But the effect is the same.

The court ruled that the plaintiffs in the case lacked “standing.” That is, they could not demonstrate they were personally harmed by what the government did. There was no smoking-gun email that said, Take down this individual’s post or else.

That’s even though it was blatantly obvious that plaintiffs like Stanford epidemiologist Jay Bhattacharya were subject to social-media bans because of their heterodox views about COVID lockdowns, restrictions and mandates.

The court’s stance might sound like careful jurisprudence, but in reality it’s a cop-out.

It’s the same cop-out the court resorted to in the years after the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

In case after case, the justices cited “standing” in refusing to put the kibosh on warrantless surveillance of everyday Americans. Thus, the spying could continue unchecked unless someone brought a case that broke through the “standing” barrier.

It amounted to the court giving the executive branch a blank check: As long as you act in secrecy, you can continue to get away with trashing the Constitution.

And so it goes here. In theory, someone could bring a similar case in the future that overcomes the standing obstacle — and the court could side with the plaintiff and against the feds. But in practice, the feds know that going forward, they’ll get away with anything as long as they cover their tracks.

As Justice Samuel Alito said in his dissent — joined by Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas — “If a coercive campaign is carried out with enough sophistication, it may get by.”

Ignoring the Feds’ “Unrelenting Pressure”

The majority examined a stand of individual trees while ignoring a massive forest — what Alito’s dissent called the “unrelenting pressure on Facebook to suppress Americans’ free speech.”

“Team Biden framed the case in terms of whether the government should have the freedom to intervene against misinformation,” writes James Bovard in the New York Post — “as if federal agencies are infallible Oracles of Delphi.

“But the issue was censorship, not the latest self-serving definition of ‘misinformation’ to emerge from the Beltway…

“After all, the biggest ‘misinformation’ of the COVID pandemic was Biden’s promise during a CNN town hall in July 2021: ‘You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.’ Subsequent waves of Delta, Omicron and other variants ravaged the credibility of Biden and federal health policymakers.”

Adds Matt Taibbi, the reporter who was first to expose the feds’ extensive exchanges with Twitter: “The court appeared to completely accept the idea that communications from the state were in reaction to ‘misinformation’ and that agencies like CDC were correct arbiters of fact.

“They missed or ignored the glaring central issue of the case, which was that the state was often wrong, and voices like those of Harvard’s Martin Kulldorff, Stanford’s Bhattacharya and [Aaron] Kheriaty of the University of California were likely suppressed for correct disagreement with state directives on issues like the COVID-19 mortality rate or the efficacy of lockdowns or natural immunity.”

The outcome is especially discouraging because of the contrast between the Supreme Court and the lower courts — which were appalled by the feds’ conduct and not distracted by legal hair-splitting.

“The appellate judges reacted like people,” Taibbi goes on.

“They read profanity-laden tirades directed at the platforms from the White House, and blithe recommendations regarding exactly how much this or that media figure should be deamplified and expressed instinctive revulsion and outrage, before collecting themselves and delivering a careful and limited ruling.

“The Supremes clearly did not find this conduct surprising or upsetting in the slightest, which is the problem.”

The Worst Year for Free Expression Since 1917

This ruling is the latest blow in what’s already been a bad 2024 for the First Amendment — perhaps the worst year since 1917 and the vicious crackdown on dissent against U.S. entry into World War I.

Another blow is the impending ban of TikTok — a platform used by 170 million Americcans to exercise their First Amendment rights. And contrary to what you might think, fully 75% of them are of voting age.

Despite the enormous size of this constituency, the TikTok ban became law this spring with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress and the signature of Joe Biden.

Unless TikTok’s Chinese owners sell their U.S. operations by next January, TikTok will be forcibly removed from U.S. app stores and web servers. (Until then, Biden’s campaign will continue to use TikTok for voter outreach, go figure.)

We’ll reiterate a few salient points here…

• The primary reason the feds put TikTok in their crosshairs is that it’s one of the few social media apps used by Americans — along with X-formerly-Twitter under Elon Musk’s ownership — that’s not totally under the thumb of the FBI, CIA, DHS, etc.

• Anyone who complains about China’s jurisdiction over TikTok usually ignores U.S. jurisdiction over Google, Facebook and Amazon — who surely hand over foreign customers’ data to the U.S. government

• Based on publicly available information, there’s no evidence TikTok spies on U.S. customers or propagandizes them. “I’ve been trying for years to find any links to the Chinese state,” writes the investigative reporter Chris Stokel-Walker — who’s done plenty of reporting critical of TikTok. “I've spoken to scores of TikTok employees, past and present, in pursuit of such a connection. But I haven’t discovered it.”

As with the broad issue of censorship, the TikTok ban also has a business-and- commerce angle.

As we chronicled last month, 7 million small online businesses rely on TikTok for their livelihoods.

“This platform is my primary source of traffic, and it’s not for lack of trying on the other sites,” writes Callie Goodwin, owner of an online card shop in South Carolina.

The owner of an online candle shop in Ohio calls TikTok “the best social media platform for small businesses without a doubt.”

And if you’re under the impression TikTok is either apolitical or left-leaning, several conservatives and libertarians beg to differ.

Among the entrepreneurs who’ve made the most of TikTok is a former Trump White House aide named John McEntee. He started a dating app for conservatives called The Right Stuff. “It wasn’t until I started posting satirical TikTok skits about dating that my business started taking off,” he writes in The Orange County Register.

“As a TikTok creator, I decided to look into the allegations surrounding the app. If I was being manipulated by the Chinese government, I wanted to know. It turns out there’s not a single known instance of the Chinese government influencing the content on the app. And all American user data is stored here in the U.S. with Oracle, an American company.”

Meanwhile, along with TikTok itself, the people behind a nonprofit called BASEDPolitics are suing to challenge the ban.

According to its mission statement, BASEDPolitics aims to introduce young people “to the ideas of free market capitalism and individual liberty.”

“TikTok offers a unique audience that can't be found elsewhere," co-founder Hannah Cox tells Reason. "Most on TikTok loathe Meta and X, so if they weren't on TikTok it's unlikely they'd engage meaningfully elsewhere.”

Says co-founder Brad Polumbo, “We wanted to file a lawsuit that was specifically focused on free speech and the First Amendment from the creators' perspective, rather than some of the other, business-related concerns in other lawsuits.”

Hmmm… Based on the precedent the Supreme Court set yesterday, we’re not holding out much hope…

Best regards,

 

 

 

 

Dave Gonigam
Managing editor, Paradigm Pressroom's 5 Bullets

P.S. As Cox and Polumbo write — and their words are just as relevant to Murthy v. Missouri as it is to their own case — “The obvious point is that government officials do not want the American people to be able to freely share information, especially information that makes them look bad…

“If they can control the flow of information, they can control you.”

P.P.S. The markets today, you ask?

All the major U.S. stock indexes are in the green, if barely — with the S&P 500 up three points to 5,481.

Among the big movers is Walgreen’s — down 25% after severely lowering its guidance for the rest of 2024 and announcing plans to close hundreds of stores. On top of General Mills’ rotten numbers and forecast yesterday, it’s evident the mighty American consumer is starting to crack beneath the weight of inflation.

Another ill omen — the May durable goods numbers. The headline figure was weak, and when you throw out aircraft and military hardware, the number was a drop of 0.6%. Among dozens of Wall Street economists polled by Econoday, the lowest guess was a 0.1% increase.

Gold is rebounding nicely, back to $2,324. Once again, the $2,300 level has held — which bodes well for the once-in-a-lifetime gold trade Jim Rickards has been talking up this week, with 5,000% profit potential over the next nine months.

If you haven’t heard about this epic opportunity yet, Jim brings you up to speed at this link.