A federal judge in Louisiana ruled last week that a wide range of Biden administration officials could not communicate with social media companies about content moderation issues, and in a lengthy opinion described the White House’s outreach to platforms as “almost dystopian” and reminiscent of “an Orwellian ministry of truth”.
The ruling, which was delivered by the Trump-appointed judge Terry Doughty, was a significant milestone in a case that Republicans have pushed as proof that the Biden administration is attempting to silence conservative voices. It is also the latest in a wider rightwing campaign to weaken attempts at stopping false information and conspiracy theories from proliferating online, one that has included framing disinformation researchers and their efforts as part of a wide-reaching censorship regime.
Republican attorneys general in Missouri and Louisiana have sued Biden administration officials, the GOP-controlled House judiciary committee has demanded extensive documents from researchers studying disinformation, and rightwing media has attacked academics and officials who monitor social media platforms. Many of the researchers involved have faced significant harassment, leading to fears of a chilling effect on speaking out against disinformation ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
The Republican pushback against anti-disinformation campaigns has existed for years, alleging that content moderation on major platforms has unfairly targeted conservative voices. Many tech platforms have instituted policies against misinformation or hateful speech that have resulted in content such as election denial, anti-vaccine falsehoods and far-right conspiracy theories being removed – all which tend to skew Republican. But research has found that allegations of anti-conservative bias at social media companies have little empirical evidence, with a 2021 New York University study showing that these platforms’ algorithms instead often work to amplify rightwing content.
The rightwing narrative of tech platform censorship persisted, however, intensifying as companies prohibited medical misinformation about Covid-19. It gained additional momentum last year after the Department of Homeland Security rolled out a disinformation governance board aimed at researching ways to stop malicious online influence campaigns and harmful misinformation. Republican politicians and rightwing media immediately seized on the board as proof of a leftist authoritarian plot.
Fox News hosts specifically singled out researcher Nina Jankowicz, who was tapped to be the board’s executive director, and ran numerous segments viciously mocking her. A year-long harassment campaign followed, leading to Jankowicz receiving death threats, having deepfake pornography made of her and seeing her personal information released online against her will.
The disinformation governance board suspended its operations only a month after its debut, in what Jankowicz told the Guardian earlier this week was the start of a larger rightwing campaign aimed at rolling back checks on disinformation. “They got a win in shutting us down, so why would they stop there?” said Jankowicz, who was originally named in the Louisiana lawsuit but removed on account of no longer being a government official.
The GOP takes aim at researchers
In addition to the lawsuit in Louisiana, Republicans have put pressure on researchers through a House select subcommittee investigation that launched in January and claims it will look into the “weaponization of the federal government”. The House judiciary committee chair, Jim Jordan, earlier this year issued a wide-ranging request for information and documents to multiple universities with programs aimed at researching disinformation, and has so far sent dozens of subpoenas.
Among the institutions and officials that Jordan requested emails and documents from were the Stanford Internet Observatory, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public and the non-profit Election Integrity Partnership. Jordan last month threatened Stanford University with legal action if it did not turn over additional records. (Stanford released communications with government officials but did not send some internal records, including ones that involved students, the university told the Washington Post.)
The Stanford Internet Observatory, the Center for an Informed Public and the Election Integrity Partnership did not return requests for comment.
Democratic representatives decried the committee’s activities as an attempt to harangue researchers and institutions that its members viewed as political enemies, likening it to McCarthyism and the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
“This committee is nothing more than a deranged ploy by the Maga extremists who have hijacked the Republican party and now want to use taxpayer money to push their far-right conspiracy nonsense,” Jim McGovern, a Democratic representative from Massachusetts, said during the formation of the committee.
The committee has struggled to be seen as legitimate, with a Washington Post-ABC News poll released in February showing that a majority of Americans view it as a partisan attempt to score political points. But it has nonetheless put pressure on academic institutions and emboldened attacks against researchers, including the University of Washington disinformation expert Kate Starbird, who told the Washington Post that she has faced political intimidation and cut back on public engagement.
Starbird and other researchers are directly named in the Louisiana lawsuit for their role as advisers to a now-disbanded Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency subcommittee on disinformation. Starbird, who did not return a request for comment, has previously stated that the Republican-led lawsuit egregiously misrepresents her work.
The Louisiana lawsuit
Republicans filed the lawsuit against Biden last year, and were joined by other plaintiffs that included the conspiracy site the Gateway Pundit and a Louisiana group opposed to vaccine mandates.
The case was notably filed in a Louisiana district court where Judge Terry Doughty presides. Doughty, who was appointed by Trump and previously ruled against Biden administration mask and vaccine mandates, is a jurist Republicans specifically seek out when shopping for a favorable forum. He has overseen more multi-state challenges to the Biden administration than any other judge, Bloomberg Law reported, despite previously being a little-known justice based in a small city of less than 50,000 people.
Legal experts questioned Doughty’s injunction against the Biden administration this week, the Associated Press reported, saying that the wide scope of the ruling meant that public health officials could be prevented from sharing their expertise. Meanwhile, disinformation researchers have stated that Republican efforts to push back against content moderation and safeguards against misinformation threaten to open the floodgates for conspiracy theories and falsehoods ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
Amid the rightwing campaign against content moderation and disinformation researchers, numerous social media platforms have also been peeling back restrictions. Twitter under Elon Musk, who last year engineered the release of some internal communications between Twitter and government officials, has hollowed out its content moderation teams. Meanwhile, YouTube has reversed a policy banning election denialism and Instagram allowed the prominent anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy Jr back on the platform.
The Biden administration stated this week that it objected to Doughty’s injunction in the Louisiana case, and would be considering its options. The justice department is seeking to appeal the ruling.
