Revisionist history. The surprising early success of the mRNA vaccine led to optimistic, yet cautious assumptions that it effectively stopped infection and significantly reduced spread (no vaccine can ever guarantee 100% prevention or zero spread). The virus changed and the vaccine's effectiveness changed as a result. It still slows down the spread and does a pretty good job of preventing infections. That's the reality of a changing world. Twitter often portrays success rates as either 100% or 0%, but the truth has always been somewhere in between and was changing.
If the truth was "somewhere in between", then why did the government try to get specific people silenced for stating what they believed was the truth?
Assuming that's true, maybe they felt that the person was pushing misinformation that would cause harm to society. The example above - 'mRNA vaccines don't stop infection or transmission' - was false and remains false today. If the statement were 'mRNA vaccines don't stop all infections or transmissions' or qualified to some other degree, it may be partially true or partially false.
So you think that if the government feels that someone is saying something they don't like, they have a right to try and get that person silenced?
I'm okay with government "silencing" someone for preventing harm to society if it is done in full transparency and is approved or allowed by some body (experts in the particular field, an independent body, a court, etc.). I'm absolutely not okay with silencing critics of the government or protecting itself or any particular person or entity. The case here is likely that the government provided a list of accounts that they think violated the social media platform's COVID policy, and the social media platform took actions based on their policy.
Constitution doesn't protect speech that is harmful to others - such as "yelling FIRE! in a movie theatre" - some people question whether or not that should be the case, but that's the current precedent.
lol dude the "fire" thing in a movie theatre is a correct example but "Constitution doesn't protect speech that is harmful to others" - totally wrong stick to whatever your day job is
Since you are an expert in constitutional law, you know that the gov't informing companies of potential misinformation isn't violating anyone's free speech.
If you truly work in the medical industry you know how regulated the federal gov't is regarding information any entity can make about pharma products or medical devices. It's surprising you think that would be unconstitutional.
This is something entirely different from contacting a large social media company with names of specific people to be silenced.
With that framing I can see why you may feel that way. But disagree with your framing. The federal gov't has a responsibility to protect public health and work to correct misinformation. Informing content providers of potential misinformation is not a bid to silence them, it's the company that is going beyond correcting that info and taking an action that may be too severe. Again you are framing this as the federal gov't silencing people who may be speaking out - that is not the case. It should be noted that a company that is informed of potentially incorrect medical information being distributed on its platform may take that very seriously given the legal liability they are exposed to - not from the federal gov't but from those who take the advice and suffer damages from it, and then may later sue the platform. While content providers are protected under section 230, it's not clear if that protection still exists if the platform knows that a user is posting potentially harmful information. But clearly you disagree with me. So I suppose there's not much left to say.
The social media platform chooses to 'silence' individuals who violate their terms of service or policies, not the government. They evaluate each individual case and make their own decision on whether or not to 'silence' someone. The government's role is merely to report the violation, but they do not force the platform to take any specific action. If the government had compelled the social media platform (ban them or you will suffer from the might of the government) to take a particular decision, that would be different. However, that did not happen. In simpler terms, the government is like a tattletale who reports the violation to a decision maker.
NOTE: I wish Musk would sue the government on behalf of the Twitter users whom he said the government violated their free speech.
