“The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that Senator Elizabeth Warren’s letter to Amazon demanding the censorship of a book due to COVID-19 ‘misinformation’ did not violate the First Amendment.
In September 2021, Warren sent a letter to Amazon to censor the book ‘The Truth About COVID-19: Exposing the Great Reset, Lockdowns, Vaccine Passports, and the New Normal.’ According to her, the book by Ronnie Cummins and Joseph Mercola contained ‘misinformation.’”
Analyst Comment: This is the next big judicial battlefield: Politicians and government agencies send notes to social media platforms (and others) to highlight content and people they don’t like. The notes contain no direct threat. Later, execs from social media platforms are hauled in front of Congress, publicly dressed down for their inability to tackle misinformation, and threatened with the repeal of section 230, which would destroy most social media platforms. How courts will view this remains an open question. If courts allow the government to use third-parties and indirect threats to drive unconstitutional censorship, we can expect the government to push forward with wide-reaching censorship actions at the ISP-level.