Courts find no government coercion of Big Tech to censor COVID 'misinformation'

Social media users alleged that federal authorities used an old gangster tactic to compel Twitter and Facebook to censor purported COVID-19 misinformation: "Nice place you've got here, be a shame if something happened to it."

Federal judges in Ohio and California didn't buy those arguments, dismissing both First Amendment cases Thursday for lack of legal standing. Both claimed Facebook and Twitter might have punished the plaintiffs anyway under their own terms of service.

"The 1st amendment is a dead letter," Stanford University medical professor Jay Bhattacharya, also a target of censorship for his anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration, tweeted in response to the rulings.