What would government censorship of speech look like?

Flagging individual social media posts for removal

The White House was asked about the coordination between the federal government and social media companies in addressing “misinformation”. This was the response given on July 15, 2021 (emphasis mine):

Q Thanks, Jen. Can you talk a little bit more about this request for tech companies to be more aggressive in policing misinformation? Has the administration been in touch with any of these companies and are there any actions that the federal government can take to ensure their cooperation, because we’ve seen, from the start, there’s not a lot of action on some of these platforms.

MS. PSAKI: Sure. Well, first, we are in regular touch with these social media platforms, and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff, but also members of our COVID-19 team, given, as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue of misinformation, specifically on the pandemic.

In terms of actions, Alex, that we have taken — or we’re working to take, I should say — from the federal government: We’ve increased disinformation research and tracking within the Surgeon General’s office. We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. We’re working with doctors and medical professionals to connect — to connect medical experts with popular — with popular — who are popular with their audiences with — with accurate information and boost trusted content. So we’re helping get trusted content out there.

Content moderation is an important part of any social network. Most people agree that a private platform has the right to moderate the content their users post. If someone starts ranting about flat earth on a cooking forum, obviously we’d want the platform to apply moderation and keep things on topic.

However, if the government tells the social media platform the type of moderation they should perform, as far as flagging individual posts, how is this not government censorship? And what if it even extends to private messenger apps?

The danger of government censorship is that it prevents open discussion of heterodox ideas. How the state accomplishes this is besides the point. Obviously if federal agents break down your door and arrest you for something you posted publicly, this would be bad. But the point of doing that is to prevent you from posting such ideas and discourage others. The state can get the same effect by preventing it at the source.

What would government censorship look like?

To those that argue that any censorship on private platforms is not a restriction on free speech, I ask you, what would a restriction on free speech look like?

If the state prevents a journalist from publishing a story under threat of prison, is this censorship?

How about if the state tells all the large social media platforms that they have to remove these posts under threat of prison? How about threat of fine? Or threat of breaking up the organization? Or just a wink and a nod? Does it matter if it all yields the same result?

And no one cares. No one is reporting on this. I imagine the government flagging social media posts for removal would be a text book definition of restriction of free speech just ten years ago, but now it’s not even discussed. Has the Overton window on privacy and freedom of speech shifted that much in the last decade?