Do implied threats count as coercion? Does a threatening tone? Does someone in a position of power making demands they don't actually have the power to enforce count as coercion? I don't know. The judge seems to think they do.
What implied threats, what threatening tone? What position of power?
If you read the examples cited, nothing even remotely comes close to a layperson interpretation of coercion, and I believe the legal definition is more rigorous, not less.
Therefore, the question is not what decision the social-media company would have made, but whether the Government “so involved itself in the private party’s conduct” that the decision is essentially that of the Government.
The government asking them to remove specific posts and accounts and demote others is pretty clearly that.
How coercive? If you're right, the government can still make a court case that takes a good part of a decade and costs you ten million dollars to win.
That's just the straightforward stuff. That's without the IRS deciding your corporate profit statements deserve extra scrutiny, and the FCC deciding to question whether you really qualify for section 230, and and and...
You can be right. They can still make your life very difficult if they decide to. And it will be very hard to prove that that's what they're doing. And even if you can, you probably aren't going to get the money back that the court cases cost, and you definitely aren't getting back the time and management attention it cost.
So, not legally coercive. But still kind of coercive, even though legally it has no force.
That would imply the person or group doing the asking somehow have unilateral control over those distinct agencies. At what point down the career ladder do you become just another drone who shouldn't be considered to have power over distinct government agencies? Surely Rachel in the Post office can't have you audited. But maybe the president can talk to enough people to encourage that to happen. So where is the limit?
Well, a "White House director of digital strategy" is presumably not Rachel in the post office. He's someone in the White House, which means he's in a position to have a quiet conversation with the president. "They're not playing ball" might be all it would take.
I mean, yes, you're right, the White House director of digital strategy, taken by himself, can go jump in the lake as far as Facebook or Twitter are concerned. Even given all the people under him, that's still true. The question is, to what degree is he speaking for the people over him? How many layers are there between him and the president? I'd guess somewhere from 0 to 2, though I admit that's a guess. Can he cause trouble on his own? No. But the one giving him orders may be able to give orders to others.
But if the president asks for something, you say no, and he sics the NSA or something onto you, how does this injunction protect you?
Basically this is arguing that the mere existence of government has a chilling effect, which it demonstrably does, but isn't really something you can make go away with an injunction. Hell, what's stopping the Biden admin from enacting this punishment scheme on these people for getting this injunction?
Well, it protects some. It makes the Biden administration somewhat less likely to ask, because there's a public rebuke from the courts, and if they keep doing it anyway, they are likely to lose any further court cases around it. So they have some deterrent - not perfect, but more than zero.
From the company's side, they have some indication that they are likely to be backed by the courts if it comes to that, so they have some more confidence in telling the administration to get lost - not perfect, but more than none. (They're not going to be less willing to say no after this court ruling.)
So, yes, the Biden administration could keep going. But that's unlikely to play well, either in the courts or in the press. The Biden administration is not a dictatorial regime; they face an election in 14 months. That gives them more incentive to "control the narrative", true, but it also gives them incentive to not be visibly seen as bullying the social media.
