In the years since Facebook and Twitter banned Donald Trump after the January 6 attacks, he and his allies have beaten down efforts to filter election lies
A government shutdown is looming — again Frank Ricci / The Daily Caller : Biden Admin's ‘Misinformation’ Crackdown Faces Day Of Reckoning At SCOTUS Ryan King / New York Post : Pence has ‘forgiven’ Trump for Jan. 6, but refuses to say whether he'll vote for former boss Threads: Renee DiResta / @renee.diresta : 🚨 🧵 There is a very important case being heard at SCOTUS tomorrow: Murthy v. Missouri. It's about jawboning — using implied govt power to coerce a company into taking an action the govt wants. The case claims that govt evaded 1A & attempted to censor conservative speech. … Renee DiResta / @renee.diresta : Jawboning is a bad thing! We should all be able to agree on that. Limits on what is ok in the era of social media are worth hashing out. But cases establishing the limits of what govt can and can't do should be rooted in actual facts. Renee DiResta / @renee.diresta : The parts work hand-in-hand: for ex, Benz's theory of “22 million censored tweets” - literally bs a random guy wrote on his blog- gets cited by Twitter Files boys in congressional testimony to Jordan. Testimony is then pretext for subpoenaing researchers. AGs cite the Twitter Files in SCOTUS filings. … Renee DiResta / @renee.diresta : A small group of people managed not only to influence their faction but to get this all the way to SCOTUS. That's disturbing. And it's important — bc make no mistake, this is a power game intended to remove barriers for 2024 campaign. Ppl who looked at election rumors in 2020 have been sued. … Renee DiResta / @renee.diresta : The NYT lays out the parts. All have something in common: 1. Trump, who told his fans MAGA was censored; 2. Jim Jordan's ""Weaponization"" committee; which subpoenaed hundreds of ppl (incl me) to find “evidence” of “censorship”; 3. The Attorneys General of MO & LA who sued the govt; 4. … Mastodon: Jeff Jarvis / @jeffjarvis@mastodon.social : The Times waves a white flag—"They have unquestionably prevailed"—but once again misses the real story. “Disinformation” does not make people vote for a racist. Racism does. — How Trump's Allies Are Winning the War Over Disinformation https://www.nytimes.com/... X: Jorge Guajardo / @jorge_guajardo : Not mentioned on this article is the PRC's control over TikTok. Maybe because you don't need a foreign owned social media company to sow disinformation. (I still have my doubts on TikTok, mostly based on reciprocity). https://www.nytimes.com/... Dan Williams / @danwilliamsphil : As with almost all liberal commentary on this topic, this simply assumes that online censorship and related policies are effective at reducing the prevalence of misperceptions. It provides no evidence for this. It's just treated as axiomatic. https://www.nytimes.com/... @sparrowmedia : During one of the most consequential election cycles in history, operators like Michael Benz, Stephen Miller, Allum Bokhari, Jim Jordan, Elon Musk, and pawns like Matt Taibbi and Michael Schellenberger are ushering in a flood tide of disinformation. https://www.nytimes.com/... LinkedIn: Richard Rosenthal : KEY POINTS: (1) Trump supporters have successfully blocked efforts by social media companies to ban disinformation from their platforms; (2) … Forums: r/politics : How Trump's Allies Are Winning the War Over Disinformation r/skeptic : How Trump's Allies Are Winning the War Over Disinformation
Context & Ripple Effects
The story sits at the end of a reversal in platform governance: after January 6 prompted exceptional intervention by major networks, Meta and YouTube were already pulling back from policing political misinformation amid a broader moderation backlash.
That backlash has extended beyond platforms. Congressional pressure helped drive researchers and agencies to curtail misinformation work, while Murthy v. Missouri brings alleged government coercion of platforms into a First Amendment dispute.
First-order effects
- Social platforms face stronger political and legal incentives to narrow or avoid election-misinformation enforcement, leaving fewer mechanisms to limit the distribution of disputed election claims.
- The federal government, state litigants and researchers are immediately affected by the Murthy v. Missouri fight and related scrutiny: routine contact about online harms can be cast as potential coercion rather than coordination.
Second-order effects
- A lighter-touch approach by major platforms can shift the competitive baseline: services that retain interventionist policies may face greater political exposure, while those that retreat incur less of it.
- Reduced moderation capacity and chilled research make it harder for outside groups to measure how election narratives travel through the feedback loops connecting Trump, influencers and followers.
Third-order effects
- If this pattern persists, election-integrity policy may move from firm-level trust-and-safety judgment toward litigation-driven limits on how platforms, researchers and government agencies interact.
- The durable contest is over distribution-layer responsibility: whether controlling amplification of false claims is treated as platform governance or as a speech and state-power risk.
The trend: This is one data point in the shift from aggressive platform moderation toward legally constrained, politically contested governance of online political speech.