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Comment by GauntletWizard | Hacker News Reader

There could be no clearer standing than this case, consisting of several users who had their opinions censored and attorneys general representing the rights of the people. If neither group has standing, who does?

This was a base act of legal buffoonery. It is transparently bullshit.

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The lack of standing comes from the failure of the plaintiffs to mention specific actions.

You can't just be like "FaceBook censored me because of the FBI". You have to actually make a claim like "My post from July 5th was removed by FaceBook because of an email written to FaceBook from the FBI on July 6th". Preferably with both the email and post as exhibits.

Well, that's not quite true. You can claim that you have been dissuaded from exercising your First Amendment rights[1] in the future (for example, that you're afraid of publishing new material under threat of punishment). That's called a "chilling effect." The problem in this case is that no plaintiff could do even that and draw a plausible and clear causal connection between their fear and the actions of the Government.

[1] The question of whether someone has a First Amendment right to make a social media post has not yet been clearly established, and the Court didn't get to this question in this case.

That allows the government to censor at will by censoring on the policy level, by making Facebook adopt government-demanded policies. Since it is always possible that Facebook could have come up with the same policy anyway by coincidence, it's never possible to trace any specific act to the government censorship.

Of course it’s possible. That’s what discovery is for. Internal emails were cited in this case as well.

And if the Government had coerced Facebook in violation of its Constitutional rights, I’m sure Facebook would sue the Government and quite possibly prevail.

Precisely. What some people want is for some judicial process to interpose itself in collusion between a private company and the government against the interests of individual clients of a private company... That if the Executive says "jump" and a private company says "how high?" in violation of no particular statute, the judiciary would stop them for First Amendment reasons.

It won't, because the companies don't own a private citizen's First Amendment right.

Facebook or Twitter would have had standing, if they claimed injury due to perceived Government threats in reaction to their speech.

Did you read the whole opinion? It's pretty coherent, and makes sense if you've ever taken a civil procedure course.

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