Washington CNN —
A federal judge’s move to limit how some US agencies communicate with social media companies could have a “chilling effect” on how the federal government and states address election-related disinformation just as the 2024 election cycle gets underway, according to interviews with current and former US officials.
Last week’s court order by a district judge in Louisiana blocking several federal agencies from communicating with social platforms about certain content has been portrayed as a fight over free speech on the internet amid allegations of government censorship. And on Friday, the order was temporarily blocked from taking effect by a federal appeals court.
As the Biden administration’s appeal slowly works its way through the courts, however, security experts, academics and current and former US officials worry that their own good faith-efforts to protect elections could end up in a future lawsuit, according to interviews with more than half a dozen sources. The resulting uncertainty, they say, risks slowing the government and social media companies’ ability to respond to election-related disinformation that appears on tech platforms.
“There will absolutely be a chilling effect at least when you consider that you’ll probably have a more conservative approach to engagements [between federal officials and tech platforms] that are otherwise...
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