The Courts vs. Misinformation Cops
Plus: A listener questions last week’s discussion of the Supreme Court's decision involving same-sex wedding websites and free expression.

In this week's The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Peter Suderman mull over last week's ruling against the Biden administration concerning politically disfavored speech on social media as well as Twitter's latest competitor—Threads—and the latest from the Ron DeSantis campaign.
0:25: A federal judge orders Biden administration officials to stop encouraging social media companies to censor disfavored content.
19:57: Threads: Meta's Twitter competitor
31:50: Weekly Listener Question
39:14: The "Mamas for DeSantis" initiative
51:08: This week's cultural recommendations
Mentioned in this podcast:
"Social media injunction unravels plans to protect 2024 elections," by Cat Zakrzewski, Naomi Nix, and Joseph Menn
"Federal Judge to Biden Administration: Stop Telling Social Media Sites To Limit Free Speech," by Eric Boehm
"Journalists Outraged That a Judge Would Dare Limit Biden's Censorship Powers," by Robby Soave
"'Mamas for DeSantis' Is Proof: The DeSantis Campaign Is Too Online," by Emma Camp
"US podcast misinformation goes largely unchecked," by Rob Lever
"'Build the wall,' Florida gubernatorial tells his young daughter in campaign ad," by Erin B. Logan
Casey DeSantis' "Mamas for DeSantis" campaign ad on Twitter
"Ron DeSantis: Good or Bad for Liberty?" by Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller with Karol Markowicz
"What DeSantis Did to Disney's Dream City," by Zach Weissmueller
"The Casey DeSantis Problem: 'His Greatest Asset and His Greatest Liability,'" by Michael Kruse
Ron DeSantis' "Top Gov" 2022 ad
Ron DeSantis' pro-Trump 2018 gubernatorial ad
"How 'disinformation' became public enemy No. 1," by Nick Gillespie and Zach Weissmueller with Jacob Siegel
"Did SCOTUS roll back gay rights and civil rights?" by Nick Gillespie with Coleman Hughes and Walter Olson
"'60s Songs That Explain the '90s': 'Tubthumping' and the Chart-Topping Anarchists," by Rob Harvilla
"A Strange Museum Takes a Strange Turn," by Stephen Wahrhaftig
Send your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.
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Audio production by Ian Keyser; assistant production by Hunt Beaty.
Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve
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>>The Reason Roundtable ... mull over last week's ruling against the Biden administration concerning politically disfavored speech on social media
I better hear Kool & The Gang and champagne chilling in the background
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https://www.zerohedge.com/political/judge-denies-biden-request-keep-meddling-social-media
God bless donald trump. His judges have done this.
The ONLY spark of hope left in america today comes from Trump judges.
dying to see if one of them takes up the Mike Meddling Defense
A listener questions last week’s discussion of the Supreme Court's decision involving same-sex wedding websites and free expression.
From the just-bake-the-cake wing of "libertarianism"?
NONE of these handwringers concerned about "misinformation" actually care one whit about misinformation.
They are concerned with any message that undermines their team's narrative.
I can go onto youtube and facebook right now and find hundreds if not thousands of videos, groups, discussions about
1. Bigfoot
2. Ghosts
3. Psychic powers
4. Astrology
and not one is being removed for "misinformation"
all those things are real.
Well, as real as Libertarians writing for Reason these days.
You can also find Mike Laursen on YouTube which is definitely fake and misinformation.
None of those would harm a child groping Democratic Party member from getting elected to office so they are totes ok.
(5) Flat Earth
oh yeah. I forgot about flat earth.
Also ancient aliens built everything impressive from pre-history
the guys in the glyphs are wearing space helmets.
Well, at least the only pussy Joe Biden grabbed was Ashley's.
He brought her into this world, he can fuck her out of it, isn't that how the saying goes?
Tara Reade's too
Most of those fall under religion in one form or another.
Just listened to their discussion of the Moms for DeSantis bit.
KMW just comes off as completely clueless. It completely explains to me why that article this weekend was so bad.
Part of being a libertarian is understanding that 95% of the American people don't agree with you. And part of being the Editor in Chief of the self declared Voice of Liberty is understanding that you need to convince those people, not dismiss them with sanctimony and contempt.
KMW has the gall to say, "forcing toddlers to mask on hind-sight was bad policy." Get that? On hind sight. Notice how she gives the benefit of the doubt to anyone who advocated for the muzzling of children. No. It was wrong the moment it was demanded, and anyone excusing that while also saying "DeSantis's bans on mask mandates were just as bad" is not serious. These are the social signals of a Blue Bubble libertine, not someone advocating liberty.
KMW needs to go. They need someone in charge of this magazine who actually understands that there is more to liberty than whatever freedoms they value in Capital City.
* Fire KMW
* Move out of DC
* Make liberty your first consideration in every article
Make liberty your first consideration... geez man, you're asking a lot there.
For a libertarian publication.
To think about liberty.
Yeah, that just seems impossible.
Funny, apparently my foresight was as good as her 20/20 hindsight. Who could have ever seen that coming besides anyone who had any fucking clue how masks worked?
Is KMW the Yoko Ono of libertarian Reason?
KMW is the editor in chief. Every shitty article with a misleading headline, multiple typos and unsourced content falls on her. The decision to work Trump into every single article as a cheap play for clicks is on her. Having interns in DC write about the happenings in San Francisco, based on some article in the NYT is all her.
She doesn't understand her mission. She doesn't have a vision for this masthead. She can't even manage basic copy-editing. She is completely asleep at the wheel. Call her Yoko if you want, I call her unfit for the position.
Or she understands her mission quite clearly, and you misunderstand what this publication's real purpose is.
Have to agree with Nardz on this, she’s doing exactly what Charlie and his pal Soros want.
You armchair quarterbacks don’t have a clue.
Conspiracy theories aside for a moment, if the Mexican military entered the US killing hundreds of civilians every day, the government would take measures to both protect people and keep them out of the way of a military response.
Covid19 was an unknown entity spreading like wildfire and killing thousands of citizens every day overwhelming healthcare. Nobody knew how it was going to mutate.
You wore a mask for the same reason your freedoms would change during a war on US soil.
If the next “lab origin” release is more deadly, say killing 50% of the infected, you and yours probably shouldn’t protect yourselves and just jump straight onto the pile of burning corpses.
"They" are perfectly satisfied with what KMW does as editor.
You refuse to admit what they want- progressive globalist totalitarianism
You guys need a better sound engineer. Listening to Nick I thought " I don't remember the stone ponies doing that ", and wasted 10 minutes trying to Google " I want to be a dork "
"A federal judge orders Biden administration officials to stop encouraging social media companies to censor disfavored content."
Encouraging?
The old "Nice podcast you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it" encouraging?
Like the Supreme Court gives a hoot about truth or falsity. It turns out that the Christian cake lady had no website and no one had asked her to make a Gay cake. Thus, that deprived the courts of jurisdictions to give an advisory opinion. What do facts and the constitution matter when a court wants to imposed its bigoted religiosity onto everyone else? As James Madison, writer of Federalist Paper #10, would have warned about a "faction" of Roman Catholics: Don't put a majority of Roman Catholic on the Supreme Court unless you want religious dogma to replace the constitution.
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