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During oral arguments on Monday, both liberal and conservative justices on the Supreme Court appeared wary of imposing broad limits on how the government can communicate with social media companies about problematic content it thinks should be removed.
The case at issue is called Murthy v. Missouri, and it asks the court to determine whether the Biden administration’s communications with platforms coerced the companies to take down content, like misinformation about covid vaccines, thereby violating the First Amendment. It also asks the court to consider whether the government’s encouragement to take down such posts actually transformed the platforms themselves into state actors.
But several justices seemed skeptical of the arguments…