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Seems like a poorly-manufactured controversy to me. A couple of points:

1. There is no First Amendment here as long as it's the companies pushing the button on tagging or deleting offending posts. Note that the gov't isn't the only entity scanning social media, looking for offending posts:

"Researchers have found just 12 people are responsible for the bulk of the misleading claims and outright lies about COVID-19 vaccines that proliferate on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter."

"The 'Disinformation Dozen' produce 65% of the shares of anti-vaccine misinformation on social media platforms," said Imran Ahmed, chief executive officer of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which identified the accounts."

"Now the vaccine rollout is reaching a critical stage in which most adults who want the vaccine have gotten it, but many others are holding out, these 12 influential social media users stand to have an outsize impact on the outcome."

"After this story published on Thursday, Facebook said it had taken down more of the accounts run by these 12 individuals."

Note that this happened back in May to no objection.

2. Doocy is clearly trolling. If you altered his question to address another recent social media issue, you'd get this:

"For how long has the Administration been spying on people’s Facebook profiles looking for ISIS recruiters and propaganda?"

I'd be VERY surprised if the folks getting their hackles up over this ALSO thought that the former administrations should have turned a blind eye toward content that favored ISIS, and convinced people to join that fight on the wrong side. There was no First Amendment concern brought up over that, so swapping "anti-vaccine propaganda" for "terrorism propaganda" doesn't change the nature of the question being asked.

That said, if this fracas convinced the Administration to back off this effort, I don't know to what extent I would mourn that. It seems like an entire swath of the American public is determined to become a cautionary tale. If they want to Jim Jones themselves, their family, and their communities, there's only so much standing in the way that we can do.

There's a limit to the paternalism that the government can exercise, and a more effective way forward that highlights individuals' responsibility for their fate would be to shift our reporting on individual and collective COVID deaths by highlighting who would have lived had they taken the shot:

"John Doe, age 47 of Springfield, died on Sunday due to COVID complications. He appears to have contracted the virus two weeks ago, and would still be alive, had he gotten his free shot at Local Healthcare Clinic two months ago when the state opened up vaccine eligibility to all adults aged 18 and older. He is survived by ... (insert remainder of standard obituary here)"

[1] https://www.npr.org/2021/05/13/996570855/disinformation-dozen-test-facebooks-twitters-ability-to-curb-vaccine-hoaxes

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author

This may be of interest to folks here, courtesy of Charlie Warzel, who argues that we're arguing over the wrong question:

"So, is Facebook killing people? Or saving them? Depending on how you want to assign blame to a social network (which is an information amplifier) it is either doing both or it is doing neither (a version of the ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’ argument). The killing/saving binary is an unhelpful frame for a conversation about Facebook because it turns an important conversation about liability into a choose-your-own-adventure argument for already interested parties. It’s a perfect little culture war scuffle that allows Joe Biden to (rightly!) pressure a company that has far too much power and far too little accountability, while allowing Facebook to play the misunderstood victim and doing little to fix its problems. Nothing changes and we move on to the next fight."

"The social media platforms allowed the groups a centralized home to develop narratives and to consolidate audiences. Having bigger, public spaces to gather online helped create a durable culture around the movement. It birthed a new set of grifters/marketers/influencers. At the same time, the platforms provided handy distribution mechanisms for these influencers and their narratives. The distribution is crucial for many reasons, one of which is that it allowed the movement to become (or at least appear) big enough to pick up the media coverage it previously couldn’t get."[1]

[1] https://warzel.substack.com/p/the-joe-biden-v-facebook-fight-is

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Jul 18, 2021Liked by David Thornton

The below list is said to be the "disinformation dozen" that Joe Biden said were the principal spreaders of anti-vax info on social media. I could find no strong connection of any to a particular political party but I did not do a lot of research. You would guess Robert Kennedy Jr. would be democrat. The others seemed as likely to be progressives as they were to be conservatives. One appeared to have some ties to Marianne Williamson.

Joseph Mercola

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Ty and Charlene Bollinger

Sherri Tenpenny

Rizza Islam

Rashid Buttar

Erin Elizabeth

Sayer Ji

Kelly Brogan

Christiane Northrup

Ben Tapper

Kevin Jenkins

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Jul 17, 2021Liked by David Thornton

I just can't believe we have come to a point where we have a political party who fights for your right to misled people into death. It's just evil.

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Jul 17, 2021Liked by David Thornton

Outrage i say. stark outrageous the Biden administration is sticking their nose in these ever-so-important social media influencer's right to make a living. Poor simple folk who recognize their ability to get people do really dumb stuff and then post it...over and over again.

Let's get alcohol makers to pay them to push driving drunk; let's get the gun lobby to encourage gun owners to leave their guns laying around so their young children can get the feel of them in their tender young hands.

If we allow these idiots with a computer to continue to push people away from being vaccinated we can drag this pandemic on forever. Oh wait, i just read, it's not real. It made far more sense to reach herd immunity by lettering millions die, rather than getting a shot or two.

I'm sorry, but sometimes the greater good usurps your right to be a moron. But, but freedumb.

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I haven't seen any evidence(so far), of the government forcing the hand of Facebook, and other social media firms. So my comments below are based on hypothetical situations, and not necessarily what is happening currently.

Skepticism of any kind of governmental collusion with the private sector for the purposes of curtailing speech(whether based on truth or fiction, and regardless of whether the Feds force their hand or not) is actually healthy. That because of a long and sorry history of the US government running afoul of the 1st amendment for opposing governmental actions of sort, especially war. Government declared emergencies have often been the backdrop and justification for the erosion of fundamental civil liberties, and its history is ugly. So, I don't fault those who raise concern over the government's efforts to combat misinformation, given that if power is abused, it can easily descend into constitutional violations. And these violations weren't limited to just speech, but also property and other forms of rights as well. That is why I tend to not give as much weight to the precedent of past actions for justification for the federal curtailing of individual rights because of an emergency.

As long as the government is not forcing Facebook's hand, then that is fine. But if there is coercion of any kind, then that would be a major problem. The concern is not so much the anti-vaxxer and/or racist who spews his or vile through social media, but the government potentially forcing FB to shut down their social media accounts. While it doesn't directly impinge on the free speech rights of the individual, it amounts to values/viewpoint discrimination, reducing the potency of the speech relative to others(not to mention government coerced deprivation of one enjoying the use of social media), which would be an easy 1st amendment issue that would end up being litigated in the courts.

Any debate on these issues regarding government collusion with social media(voluntary or not), also has to factor in agency of the individual. Yes, a lot of people do lie on social media and spread misinformation. But people are free to choose whether to accept the anti-vax and election truther lies, or not. Every person should exercise due diligence in sifting truth from mistruths. The anti-vaxxer or election truther has no power to indoctrinate/influence me anymore than I allow it to. The fact we are in a pandemic, with people choosing not to get vaxxed, doesn't change that equation. Rather, combat misinformation with the truth, and compassionately engage with people who have bought into the lies. At this point, if these people won't get the vaccine, that's on them. Maybe what the government can do is to sell vaccine passports for a fee(so it can be deficit neutral), and airlines can choose to require them for domestic and foreign travel. Businesses will have a tool at their hands to distinguish the vaxxed from the non-vaxxed. Since I'm vaxxed, I can enjoy a vacation in Tahiti, while the unvaxxed will sulk in jealously. ;)

World War 1 was not a good era for the fidelity to the 1st amendment. During the first world war, many people were jailed for expressing opposition to the war, among them Eugene Debs, a socialist candidate for President who was vociferously opposed to Woodrow Wilson's actions in the first world war. The Cold War era also had then FBI director J. Edgar Hoover engaging in excesses that violated the civil liberties of individuals, including MLK Jr.

My hypothetical rant over, here is what I think of the current situation as it is. So far, I've not seen any evidence of social media firms having their hand forced by the government. Presidential administrations, being inherently political, point out "misinformation", whether true or not. The Biden administration, or any presidential administration calling out Alex Berenson, Tucker Carlson, and others for their lies on vaccines, are actions perfectly within their rights. Biden is exercising his 1st amendment rights calling out the lies. In another vein, Donald Trump spent nearly every day of his presidency whining about "FAKE NEWS!!", and no rational person would believe that Trump's verbose vitriol amounted to taking away the rights of the media. And he spent a lot of time railing against Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and countless other private citizens. Yep, it was 1st amendment protected! Barack Obama and his administration whined about Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity quite a bit. Obama was merely exercising his free speech rights, and no one ever thought that Sean and Rush were deprived of their rights.

To sum it up, I get, sympathize, and understand Americans who tend to look upon governmental actions with skepticism and concern. I do that constantly. But here is the thing. Presidents and their administration officials have 1st amendment rights too, to point out what they feel is misinformation. Because if President Biden's actions in singling out those who lie is not constitutional, then neither is former President Trump's tirades against the media, and everyone else he doesn't like.

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