Public statements, emails, and documents have revealed US President Joe Biden and other senior officials in his administration violated the First Amendment by directing social media platforms to censor viewpoints going against their COVID-19 response. .“This sort of censorship, which strikes at the heart of what the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect — free speech, especially political speech — constitutes unlawful government action,” said the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) in a Tuesday press release. .“The federal government is deciding whose voices and ideas may be heard, and whose voices and ideas must be silenced.”.The release said the NCLA has now joined the lawsuit State of Missouri ex rel. Schmitt, et al. v. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., et al to represent epidemologists and Great Barrington Declaration co-authors Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Martin Kulldorff and infectious disease specialists Dr. Aaron Kheriaty and Dr. Jill Hines..It said social media platforms, acting on behalf of the American government, censored views criticizing the country’s COVID-19 restrictions. .The release went on to say this censorship was done through deplatforming, suspensions, shadow bans, deboosting, demonetizing, restricting access to content, orders directing users take down posts, and imposing warning labels requiring click-through access. .NCLA said these actions deprive Americans of “their right to hear the views of those who are being silenced, a First Amendment corollary of the right to free speech.”.“The government’s policy of coercing social-media companies to censor Plaintiffs’ viewpoints should be declared unlawful and halted immediately,” it said. .Social media censorship related to COVID-19 could be observed when the Western Standard was suspended from Twitter on August 10 for two stories pertaining to vaccines, which allegedly violated the platform’s rule about "spreading misleading and harmful information.” .READ MORE: Twitter suspends Western Standard for stories about COVID vaccines.Despite Twitter's claim, neither story discussed the effectiveness or risks of vaccination. These stories were about consent and COVID-19 posing a low risk to young people.
