Amy Klobuchar’s Health Misinformation Act Has Aged Poorly
By the summer of 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic had entered a new phase. Vaccines were widely available for those who wanted them, and coronavirus cases had declined as the initial wave was beaten back. Even so, mass vaccination did end the pandemic; the vaccines offered considerable protection against severe disease and death—particularly for the elderly and at-risk population—but they did not prevent infection.
The frustration from the public health establishment was palpable, and top policymakers within the Biden administration blamed vaccine hesitant individuals for exacerbating the pandemic. In July, President Joe Biden said, “the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated.” Among government health advisors, a consensus quickly formed that the main culprit was medical misinformation on social media.
Biden asserted that Facebook had blood on its hands and implied that regulation would follow if moderation did not improve; as a consequence, the social media company effectively put the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in charge of determining what kind of speech would be permitted on the platform. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy published a report on “Combatting Health Misinformation” that encouraged social media platforms to “prioritize early detection of misinformation ‘super spreaders'” and limit their reach wherever possible. The Center for Countering Digital Hate, an activist non-profit organization, coined the term “disinformation dozen” to refer to the 12 social media accounts most responsible for the spread of anti-vax narratives, and urged social media companies to take action.
The anti-misinformation efforts were not just talk: They had a legislative component as well. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.) was particularly animated on this issue. On July 22, 2021, she introduced the Health Misinformation Act, which would have granted broad new powers to the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS). These powers would have included the ability of the secretary to reduce online platforms’ protection from liability under Section 230, the federal law that immunizes websites from liability for users’ speech. In effect, Klobuchar’s bill would have established that the federal government could use a public health emergency as a pretext to erode vital free speech protections at the whims of HHS.
It is clear whose speech Klobuchar was inter
Article from Reason.com
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