Some critics of last week's preliminary injunction in Missouri v. Biden, which bars federal officials from encouraging social media platforms to suppress constitutionally protected speech, reject the premise that such contacts amount to government-directed censorship. Other critics, especially researchers who focus on "disinformation" and hate speech, pretty much concede that point but see nothing troubling about it. From their perspective, the problem is that complying with the First Amendment means tolerating inaccurate, misleading, and hateful speech that endangers public health, democracy, and social harmony.
The day after Terry Doughty, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, issued the injunction, The New York Times gave voice to those concerns in a piece headlined "Disinformation Researchers Fret About Fallout From Judge's Order." According to the subhead, those researchers "said a restriction on government interaction with social media companies could impede efforts to curb false claims about vaccines and voter fraud."
