The Supreme Court will allow federal agencies to resume widespread communication with social media companies for the purposes of suppressing controversial speech. For everyone who was perturbed by the Twitter Files and Facebook Files—which revealed a vast web of government pressure on private actors, called jawboning—this is a regrettable outcome.
The case was Murthy v. Missouri—also known as Missouri v. Biden—and involved a group of individuals who were kicked off Facebook and Twitter. They contended that the platforms took such actions at the behest of the federal government. The Court held 6-3 that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring such a case and thus the lower court, the 5th Circuit, erred in prohibiting the government from engaging in said communications with social media companies.
