Government Coercion vs. Persuasion in Content Moderation

Today, we’re bringing you an episode of Arbiters of Truth, our series on the information ecosystem.

On March 18, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, concerning the potential First Amendment implications of government outreach to social media platforms—what’s sometimes known as jawboning. The case arrived at the Supreme Court with a somewhat shaky evidentiary record, but the legal questions raised by government requests or demands to remove online content are real.

To make sense of it all, Lawfare Senior Editor Quinta Jurecic and Matt Perault, the Director of the Center on Technology Policy at UNC-Chapel Hill, called up Alex Abdo, the Litigation Director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. While the law is unsettled, the Supreme Court seemed skeptical of the plaintiffs’ claims of government censorship. But what is the best way to determine what contacts and government requests are and aren't permissible?

If you’re interested in more, you can read the Knight Institute’s amicus brief in Murthy here and Knight’s series on jawboning—including Perault’s reflections—here.

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