Suchergebnisse

Prof. Jane Bambauer and I discuss Murthy v. Missouri (the former Missouri v. Biden).

In Murthy v. Missouri, the Court may dodge the merits of the case by deciding the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate censorship harms redressable by injunction.
The post Persuasion or Coercion? Unpacking Oral Arguments and Problems in Murthy v. Missouri appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

In Murthy v. Missouri, the government attempts to draw a distinction between lawful persuasion of social media platforms to remove content and unconstitutional coercion.
The post Persuasion or Coercion? Understanding the Government’s Position in Murthy v. Missouri, Part I appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

In Murthy v. Missouri, the government argues that officials engaged in a routine back-and-forth with social media companies, not coercive censorship.
The post Persuasion or Coercion? Understanding the Government’s Position in Murthy v. Missouri, Part II appeared first on American Enterprise Institute - AEI.

Dr. Alexander Coppock, Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University, shares his research on measuring the political effects of persuasive information. We discuss how political persuasion affects voters holding different viewpoints, the durability of these effects over time, and how much political ads seem to affect voters’ political attitudes. Here are Dr. Coppock’s research...
The post #164: Political Persuasion and the Effects of Targeted Social Media Ads, with Dr. Alexander Coppock appeared first on Social Media and Politics.

Prof. Hamburger is wrong to argue that the use of the word "abridgment" implies that noncoercive government persuasion directed at social media firms violates the First Amendment.

“On April 30, Santiago Peña of the center-right Colorado Party won the Paraguayan elections with 43% of the vote, providing political continuity in a region known for its anti-establishment persuasion. The Colorado Party also achieved notable success in gubernatorial and congressional races—winning 15 out of the 17 gubernatorial races and securing a majority in both […]
The post What to Expect From Paraguay’s New Government appeared first on International Republican Institute.

Megan Clasen, Partner at Gambit Strategies, shares her insights into digital political advertising for persuasion and mobilization. We discuss the role of social media ads relative to CTV and OTT advertising, as well as how political ads compete with corporate brands for inventory on these services. Megan also shares her experiences with Facebook’s ad ‘blackout’...
The post #156: Digital Political Advertising Beyond Social Media, with Megan Clasen appeared first on Social Media and Politics.

Mustafa Akyol and Neal McCluskey


America's culture wars are sometimes perceived as conflict between "conservatives," who defend the values of white Christians, and "progressives," who defend the rights of minorities. But there is something new these days complicating this always too‐​simple dichotomy: Some minorities are also quite conservative in their moral standards, and they are raising their voices against impositions from the progressive side.
This is evident in ongoing protests by Muslim and Christian families, among others, from Maryland to Los Angeles, against public schools pushing lessons about gender and sexuality that contradict religious values. "Protect our children" these families have called together, adding, "Protect religious freedom."
On June 24, in National Review, we highlighted this new development in a co‐​authored article: "Defuse the Culture War with Liberated Education."
First, we argued that the newly emerging Muslim‐​Christian alliance for traditional values offers interesting lessons:
There are lessons for both political camps. America's assertive progressives should realize that theirs is a counterproductive campaign. By advancing their ideals through assertion and coercion, instead of persuasion, they are alienating many people, including some minorities they claim to defend. Among Muslims, they are also giving ammunition to hardliners, who preach that Western freedom is a lie, that it only means freedom from religion and tradition, and thus Muslims should reject it everywhere.

On the other hand, America's conservatives should reconsider their distance from minorities, including a rigid stance against immigration, symbolized by Donald Trump's famous "Build the Wall" campaign. Those on the political right should realize that they may well share values with some of the people that they want to push behind that wall.

Then, we also proposed a solution to these increasingly intense culture wars in American education:
We believe that the best strategy is to keep government out of decisions about values and culture whenever possible, including — perhaps especially — in education, which is about nothing less than shaping human minds. This requires allowing more choice, so families can decide for themselves what their kids will learn. Instead of diverse people being forced to fight, they can freely pursue what they think is right.

The solution, in other words, was in going back to the classical liberal foundations of America:
Government should not discriminate against LGBTQ individuals, nor should it discriminate against people with traditional values. The only way to treat all equally, while advancing genuine tolerance, is the good old American value of limited government.

Read the whole article here in National Review. Read more about School Choice here. And see our catalogue of culture war in public schools – the Public Schooling Battle Map – here.

An updated version of this post is now available at Good Thoughts.Philosophical discussion of utilitarianism understandably focuses on its most controversial features: its rejection of deontic constraints and the "demandingness" of impartial maximizing.  But in fact almost all of the important practical implications of utilitarianism stem from a much weaker feature, one that I think probably ought to be shared by every sensible moral view.  It's just the claim that it's really important to help others.  As Peter Singer and other effective altruists have long argued, we're able to do extraordinary amounts of good for others very easily (e.g. just by donating 10% of our income to the most effective charities), and this is very much worth doing.It'd be helpful to have a snappy name for this view, which assigns (non-exclusive) central moral importance to beneficence.  So let's coin the following:Beneficentrism: The view that promoting the general welfare is deeply important.Clearly, you don't have to be a utilitarian to accept beneficentrism. You could accept deontic constraints. You could accept any number of supplemental non-welfarist values (as long as they don't implausibly swamp the importance of welfare). You could accept any number of views about partiality and/or priority.  You can reject 'maximizing' accounts of obligation in favour of views that leave room for supererogation.  You just need to appreciate that the numbers count, such that immensely helping others is immensely important.Once you accept this very basic claim, it seems that you should probably be pretty enthusiastic about effective altruism. Not making any claims about "obligation" here, but just in terms of fittingness: we should care about what's important, and effective altruism basically just is the attempt to put beneficentrism into practice, i.e. to act upon what we've just agreed is deeply important. (Of course, you might have any number of empirical disagreements with other effective altruists about how best to achieve this goal.  Nothing here commits you to agreeing with them about such details.  I just mean that you ought to be enthusiastic about the basic project.)Beneficentrism strikes me as impossible to deny while retaining basic moral decency. (Cf. Stalin's "a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.")  Does anyone disagree?  Devil's advocates are welcome to comment.Even if theoretically very tame, beneficentrism strikes me as an immensely important claim in practice, just because most people don't really seem to treat promoting the general welfare as an especially important goal.  Utilitarians do, of course, and are massively over-represented in the effective altruism movement as a result.  But why don't more non-utilitarians give more weight to the importance of impartial beneficence?  I don't understand it.  (Comments welcome on this point, too.)I guess one possibility is that the standard ideology of "obligations", "permissions", etc., encourages people to focus on meeting the bare baseline of moral adequacy.   (Didn't murder anyone today, hooray!) But I think that's a bad ideology.  We shouldn't just care about avoiding wrongdoing (indeed, I don't think we should precisely care about that at all).  We should care about what's important.So I'd like to invite everyone, whatever your moral-theoretical persuasion, to explicitly consider what you think is truly important, and whether beneficentrism might be a part of the answer.And if you're then enthusiastic (as I hope you might be) about making beneficence a more central aspect of your life, maybe consider the Giving What We Can pledge?

A group of faculty at Penn have written A Vision for a New Future of the University of Pennsylvania at https://pennforward.com/.  They encourage signatures, even if you're not associated with Penn. I signed. Big picture: Universities stand at a crossroads. Do universities choose pursuit of knowledge, the robust open and uncomfortable debate that requires; excellence and meritocracy, even if as in the past that has meant admitting socially disfavored groups? Or do universities exist to advance, advocate for, and inculcate a particular political agenda? Choose.  Returning to the former will require structural changes, and founding documents are an important part of that rebuilding effort.  For example, Penn and Stanford are searching for new presidents. A joint statement by board and president that this document will guide rebuilding efforts could be quite useful in guiding that search and the new Presidents' house-cleaning. There is some danger in excerpting such a document, but here are a few tasty morsels: Principles:Penn's sole aim going forward will be to foster excellence in research and education.Specifics:Intellectual diversity and openness of thought.  The University of Pennsylvania's core mission is the pursuit, enhancement, and dissemination of knowledge and of the free exchange of ideas that is necessary to that goal.....Civil discourse.  The University of Pennsylvania ... acknowledges that no party possesses the moral authority to monopolize the truth or censor opponents and that incorrect hypotheses are rejected only by argument and persuasion, logic and evidence, not suppression or ad-hominen attacks. Political neutrality at the level of administration.  ... In their capacity as university representatives, administrators will abstain from commenting on societal and political events...The University must remain neutral to scientific investigation, respect the scientific method, and strive to include many and varied approaches in its research orientation.Admissions, hiring, promotion ... No factor such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, or religious associations shall be considered over merit in any decision related to the appointment, advancement, or reappointment of academic, administrative, or support staff at any level. Excellence in research, teaching, and service shall drive every appointment, advancement, reappointment, or hiring decision.no factor such as gender, ethnicity, nationality, political views, sexual orientation, or religious associations shall be considered in any decision related to student admission and aid. Faculty committed to academic excellence must have a supervisory role in the admission process of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. Admission policies should prioritize the fair treatment of each individual applicant, and criteria must be objective, transparent, and clearly communicated to all community members. Faculty have outsourced admissions to bureaucrats. While the cats are away, the mice play. Faculty complain the students are dumb snowflakes. Well, read some files. And no more "bad personality" scores for asians. Education:A central goal of education is to train students to be critical thinkers, virtuous citizens, and ethical participants in free and open but civilized and respectful debate that produces, refines, and transmits knowledge. Competition:as Penn's competitors struggle to define their mission and lose their focus on this manner of excellence, Penn has a unique opportunity to emerge as a globally leading academic institution in an ever more competitive international landscape....An unconditional commitment to academic excellence will become Penn's key comparative advantage in the decades to come. As many other universities in Europe and the U.S. compromise their hiring decisions by including other non-academic criteria, Penn will be able to hire outstanding talent that otherwise would have been hard to attract. I have been puzzled that the self-immolation of (formerly) elite universities has not led to a dash for quality in the second ranks. There is a lot of great talent for sale cheap. But many second rank schools seem to have bought in to The Agenda even more strongly than the elite. I guess they used to copy the elite desire for research, and now they copy the elite desire for fashionable politics. Or perhaps donors government, alumni or whatever it is that universities compete for  also are more interested in the size of the DEI bureaucracy than the research accomplishments and teaching quality of the faculty or the competence of the students. Clearly, the writers of this document think in the long run competition will return to the production and dissemination of knowledge, and that universities that reform first will win.  

If this is the best the GOP opponents of Republican
Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry can do
to try to derail his gubernatorial train, they might as well quit the race now
and save taxpayers the expense of a general election runoff in two months.

In
advance of a televised debate that Landry won't attend because one of the
hosts is a nonpartisan but clearly leftist advocacy group, Republican Treas. John Schroder released
an attack advertisement that may get some air time at least in parts of the
state. The ad points out that Texas lawyer Zach Moseley, as part of the firm in
which he is a principal, is alleged to have engaged in a variety of shady practices
over a blizzard of suits against insurers regarding recent hurricane disasters
that have struck Louisiana.

Already the Western
District of Louisiana federal judiciary has hauled him and others of this
firm in front of it to explain themselves, as well as mete out fines, over
actions such as withholding settlement monies that netted them suspensions, and
frowned upon the firm's aggressive collecting of clients, opaqueness in
informing clients of their rights if not outright misrepresentation (taking advantage
of a loophole in state law now closed as
a result of the negative publicity), and potentially even breaking the law with
such actions as forgeries. The state's Insurance Department already has fined
the firm, Moseley, and two others a maximum $2
million besides halting their ability to do business in the state for a
time which the court continued.

Interestingly, essentially Moseley outhustled a lot
of Louisiana ambulance chasers for this business, enraging them so basically they
built the case against him for LDI and federal prosecutors to follow. However,
besides vying for hurricane compensation business, the trial lawyers have one
other thing in common in a fact pointed out in the Schroder ad: Moseley donated
$5,000 to Landry's campaign on Apr. 5, in the middle of his LDI suspension.

Schroder's ad convicts
Moseley where courts haven't yet, calling it a "massive fraud scheme," then
asserts that Landry "did nothing to protect" individuals and called the
donation "maybe" an attempt to "buy" influence. It then terms this incident as
an example of needed political culture change that Schroder would provide.

As with attack ads generally, its lack of context heavily
distorts to denigrate the target. Landry didn't do anything because regulation of
insurance matters rests with LDI and regulation of lawyer behavior (at least
for the firm's Louisiana affiliates) rests with the state's Supreme Court.
Other conduct already had been brought to the attention of federal courts. What
else was he going to do?

Of course, when you receive nearly 3,000 donations
– about nine times what Schroder
got in that early April to early July period – it's hard to keep track of
any suspicious names whose funds you might want to reject … unless you're a
candidate hardly registering in the polls grasping at straws to turn things
around who therefore goes over the front runner's contributors with a
fine-tooth comb. And note the guilt-by-association tactic works both ways: Schroder
accepted $500 from the Louisiana Chinese Chamber of Commerce, who objected
to what became Act
537 last session that prohibits foreign adversaries like the People's
Republic of China and those connected to it from acquiring land in Louisiana.
Does that mean Schroder's in bed with Red Chinese communists?

So, some apparently slimy but to date not
convicted lawyer – unlikely even known by Landry much less with whom he ever
had any communications with him about his legal woes – caught up in a matter Landry's
agency doesn't have to address and, if criminal charges eventually are filed,
the federal government has the authority to prosecute, gives money to Landry, and
Schroder wants us to believe that means Landry is of such poor character and
ripe for corrupting that Landry feels compelled to help the guy skirt the law? That's
all Schroder has?

If that's indicative of what the GOP minnows have of
the attack persuasion – who not only have to detach voters from Landry but then
also find a way to steer them into their columns despite their paucity of funds
and Landry's reported
$8 million war chest standing in the way of that – let the fat lady start
warming up. You can't beat something with nothing, and by this Schroder suggests
he's got nothing left by which to convince enough voters to advance his political
career.

Walter Olson


Seven conservative state attorneys general led by Indiana's Todd Rokita have sent a letter to the chairman and CEO of the Target Corporation, Brian Cornell, threatening ill‐​specified legal action because of the retailer's sale of Pride merchandise including t‑shirts, onesies and other children's apparel, as well as its financial support of the private advocacy group GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network). The letter is an effort to chill the retailer's liberty to engage in conduct protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution; beyond that, much of it is based on false, incoherent, or simply missing legal analysis.
Target's sale of Pride merchandise has generated controversy and backlash, some of it factitious, but whether you consider the bibs and tote bags cute or cringe is neither here nor there. Let's instead cut to the legal chase: inasmuch as they send a message by displaying controversial words and symbols, they are plainly speech for First Amendment purposes. That is why the authorities in Lexington, Ky., were plainly in the wrong ten years ago when they threatened charges under municipal anti‐​discrimination law against a screen printer that declined to print message shirts for a gay rights organization. (The complaint was eventually disallowed on other grounds.) I'd be surprised if prominent legal conservatives like these seven state officials don't know about that compelled‐​speech case, which stirred justified outrage more than a decade before the case of Lorie Smith and 303 Creative v. Elenis. (Besides Rokita, the attorneys general are Andrew Bailey of Missouri, Tim Griffin of Arkansas, Daniel Cameron of Kentucky, Raul Labrador of Idaho, Lynn Fitch of Mississippi, and Alan Wilson of South Carolina.)
Rokita's letter suggests that the merchandise Target offered for sale might be deemed obscene or "harmful to minors," but as attorney Ari Cohn points out, it is vanishingly unlikely that any federal court would find the actual merchandise to fall under the existing legal definitions of these terms, which tend to require (among other things) the presence of nudity, sexual conduct, and the like. Perhaps grasping the weakness of this legal ground, Rokita's letter goes on to cite entirely irrelevant legislation on such topics as what books should be stocked in public school libraries. It also curiously invokes parental rights, although its gist is to assert the authority of government rather than parents, to the point of dismissing the autonomy of parents who are presumably capable of deciding for themselves what bibs are welcome in their homes or as a gift at their baby showers.
Particularly disturbing is the letter's suggestion that Target has somehow overstepped a legal line by contributing to the private advocacy group GLSEN. It seems based on the idea that not only is there something unlawful in being a group that advocates for some kinds of wrongheaded laws and policies, but it might be unlawful even to be a donor to such a group. Even if you don't think drawings on t‑shirts exemplify core protected political speech, this clearly does. Writes Cohn: "This thinly‐​veiled threat that Target could face prosecution if it doesn't stop donating to advocacy that government officials don't like is wholly beneath contempt, and should be repulsive to every American."
The letter falls into the unlovely official tradition of "jawboning" to apply pressure against otherwise protected speech — a pattern we've seen elsewhere, for example, in some progressive governments' economic war against Second Amendment advocacy. As Cato colleague Will Duffield wrote the other day, commenting on a widely noted July 4 ruling by federal judge Terry Doughty in a case over White House jawboning of social media platforms, it can be quite difficult "to draw clear lines between constitutionally acceptable notification and even persuasion, and impermissible pressure and bullying." That is, at least, unless the government actors get truly blatant about threatening to use their government powers in an effort to coerce the takedown — as here.
In a piquant juxtaposition, Andrew Bailey, the attorney general of Missouri, took a victory lap after his state won a favorable ruling in the social media case, only to turn around the next day and appear as a signatory of the Rokita letter. It all depends on what level of government is doing the browbeating to accomplish the takedown, doesn't it?

Will Duffield


In Missouri v. Biden, Missouri and Louisiana have sued the Biden administration for pressuring social media platforms to remove controversial and COVID‐​skeptical speech. On Independence Day, Federal District Court Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction barring a bevy of executive branch agencies and specific federal employees from pressuring social media platforms to remove speech.
An accompanying memorandum ruling documents dozens of examples of inappropriate or careless government pressure to censor. Although it is heartening to see courts take jawboning seriously, the judgement illustrates the difficulty of drawing workable lines around government communication with social media platforms.
The injunction prohibits officials from flagging content, pushing for content policy changes, and meeting or communicating with platforms for the purposes of "urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech." On its face, this is a broad prohibition. However, what is or is not protected speech is often difficult to determine, and government officials often mistake or exaggerate the First Amendment's limits.
Indeed, the injunction includes exceptions for "informing" and "contacting" social media platforms about criminal activity, threats to national security, public safety, election interference, and, more generally, "deleting, removing, suppressing, or reducing posts on social‐​media platforms that are not protected free speech."
These exceptions can be read to cover much of the government speech that prompted concerns about jawboning in the first place. "Contacting and/​or notifying social‐​media companies about … foreign attempts to influence elections" is the whole of the controversy about government involvement in Twitter's decision to bar the New York Post's Hunter Biden story from its platform. Judge Doughty didn't necessarily draw bad lines here – the House's HR 140, legislation intended to prohibit jawboning, includes unworkably narrow exceptions. It is simply hard to draw feasible lines here.
The tensions between the injunction's overlapping prohibitions and exceptions show how difficult it is to draw clear lines between constitutionally acceptable notification and even persuasion, and impermissible pressure and bullying. Any practical prohibition will be too narrow and open to abuse, but any prohibition broad enough to resist gaming will prove unworkable when it covers normal government communications.
The memorandum ruling briefly outlines the two standards under which government communications with platforms might be unlawful, drawn from Supreme Court decisions in Bantam Books v. Sullivan and Blum v. Yaretsky. While Blum hinges on "significant [government] encouragement" such that "the choice must in law be deemed to be that of the State", Bantam Books merely requires government to make a clear threat. I examine both lines of jurisprudence and their implications in greater detail in "Jawboning Against Speech."
Although the penumbra of government pressure cataloged in Missouri v. Biden might be more easily judged "significant encouragement" than outright coercion, there is good reason to prefer the court use Bantam Books when it decides the merits of the case. Bantam Books is a much more workable standard for addressing government interference in content moderation, where the frequency of private content moderation makes it hard to determine what wouldn't have been removed but for government pressure. Although outright coercion is less frequent, it is much easier to identify. And starting from government coercion leads to better remedies than treating social media platforms as state actors.
As the judgement illustrates, crafting a workable remedy is difficult. A solution must be able to discourage government pressure upfront rather than bind platforms' hands after they have been bullied. Outright prohibitions struggle to find workable lines. Beyond the facts of specific cases involving particular government demands, there might not be a goldilocks zone of viable general prohibitions on government communication with private platforms.
Disclosure is a better approach. If we cannot establish rules to cover every case, we can expose government requests to public scrutiny. On the margin, officials will refrain from sending bullying messages if they know that they will be made public. When jawboning implicates particular speakers, a disclosure regime will make it far easier for them to bring suit. Make no mistake, judicial attention is valuable, and this injunction sends a strong signal that jawboning is a real problem. However, it is problem that will ultimately require congressional action to solve.