What the Supreme Court ruling on social media means

CNN —

The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a decision that could have enormous consequences for the 2024 election, saying the US government can – for now – keep warning social media companies about mis- and disinformation threats it’s seeing online.

Although the case was decided narrowly on a technicality and not on the substance of the issues, the decision is nonetheless among the most consequential of the court’s current term.

Here’s everything you need to know about this critical case affecting online speech and the democratic process.

What can the US government tell social media companies to do?

As a result of Wednesday’s ruling in Murthy v. Missouri, agencies such as the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security will continue to be able to contact social media companies about posts they view as mis- and disinformation.

Examples could include false claims about Covid-19, unfounded allegations about election fraud or other statements that in some situations may violate the platforms’ own policies.

Republican-led states, including Missouri and Louisiana, along with five social media users, claimed in 2022 that those contacts with social media companies were in fact part of an unconstitutional government campaign to silence free speech.

The US government has been flagging this type of content to social media companies for years, at times using extremely forceful language to demand the content be removed. At oral arguments, justices spent more than 90 minutes trying to discern the line between government persuasion on one hand and undue government coercion on the other.

Why is the government talking to social media companies?

The government’s outreach to social media platforms has been happening