Biden’s revelations of META ‘censorship’ ‘vindicated’ Alito’s dissent in the Kennedy case
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement that Facebook and Instagram are winding down third-party fact-checkers and the easing of certain content restrictions was praised by some conservative activists, who hailed it as “vindication” for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who in late 2023 dissented from the rest of the court in a case involving content regulation involving the publication of a former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The case centered on whether Meta acted outside of his scope when his platform, Facebook, temporarily removed a 30-minute video posted by Kennedy that included vaccine misinformation and other false claims about COVID-19. Most members of the Supreme Court refused to take the case without explanation, but Alito disagreed, writing as the court’s lone dissenter.
Alito, a George W. Bush appointee, strongly condemned the removal of the video, saying the platform censored a type of political speech in its attempts to crack down on misinformation and could therefore be seen as acting on behalf of the US. to the government and possibly causing, as he described, “irreparable” damage.
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Judge Samuel Alito Jr. during an official group photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“Our democratic form of government is undermined if government officials prevent a candidate for high office from communicating with voters, and such efforts are especially dangerous when the officials who engage in such behavior are responding to a rival candidate,” Alito said in dissent.
“I would allow him to intervene to ensure that we can reach the merits of the defendant’s claim and to prevent the irreparable loss of his First Amendment rights,” Alito added.
“Because Mr. Kennedy’s arguments on the merits are substantially the same as respondents’, allowing intervention would not materially affect petitioner’s burden on that issue,” Alito wrote. “But the denial of intervention will likely prevent Mr. Kennedy from asserting his rights until the spring of 2024, and possibly until June of that year. And by then, several months of the presidential campaign will have passed.”
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Meta and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg admitted in a video posted on social media that they “went too far” and allowed too much political bias from outside fact-checkers. (The Joe Rogan Experience)
Zuckerberg announced earlier this month that Meta would end previous content restrictions used by Facebook and Instagram — which were introduced after the 2016 election — admitting in a video posted on social media that they “went too far” and allowed too much political bias from outside fact-checkers.
“We’ve reached a point where there are just too many bugs and too much censorship,” Zuckerberg said in the announcement.
“The recent election also feels like a cultural tipping point toward re-prioritizing speech. So we’re going back to our roots, focusing on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies and restoring freedom of expression on our platforms.”
Meta will now replace that system with a “Community Notes”-style program, similar to the approach of social media platform X, he said. X is owned by Elon Muskco-director of the planned Department for Government Efficiency.
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That news he was praised by Mollie Hemingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, who remarked to Xu that Zuckerberg’s decision “vindicated” Alito’s dissent. “It’s kind of crazy how Zuck thought ‘what they did must be illegal,’ but the majority of the court was like, ‘I mean, who knows?'” Hemingway said of the Supreme Court’s decision not to take up the case.
