Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/23-411_3dq3.pdf
Page Number: 8

Cite as:  603 U. S. ____ (2024) 

3 

Opinion of the Court 

19,036.  Twitter and YouTube began applying their policies
in March and May 2020, respectively.  Throughout the pan-
demic, the platforms removed or reduced posts questioning 
the efficacy and safety of mask wearing and the COVID–19
vaccine, along with posts on related topics. 

The platforms also applied their misinformation policies
during the 2020 Presidential election season.  Facebook, in 
late  2019,  unveiled  measures  to  counter  foreign  interfer-
ence campaigns and voter suppression efforts.  One month 
before the election, multiple platforms suppressed a report 
about Hunter Biden’s laptop, believing that the story origi-
nated from a Russian hack-and-leak operation.  After the 
election,  the  platforms  took  action  against  users  or  posts 
that questioned the integrity of the election results.

Over  the  past  few  years,  various  federal  officials  regu-
larly  spoke  with  the  platforms  about  COVID–19  and
election-related  misinformation.    Officials  at  the  White 
House, the Office of the Surgeon General, and the Centers 
for  Disease  Control  and  Prevention  (CDC)  focused  on 
COVID–19 content, while the Federal Bureau of Investiga-
tion (FBI) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Secu-
rity Agency (CISA) concentrated on elections. 

White  House.  In  early  2021,  and  continuing  primarily 
through  that  year,  the  Director  of  Digital  Strategy  and
members of the COVID–19 response team interacted with
the platforms about their efforts to suppress vaccine misin-
formation.  They expressed concern that Facebook in par-
ticular was “one of the top drivers of vaccine hesitancy,” due
to the spread of allegedly false or misleading claims on the 
platform.  App. 659–660.  Thus, the officials peppered Face-
book (and to a lesser extent, Twitter and YouTube) with de-
tailed questions about their policies, pushed them to sup-
press certain content, and sometimes recommended policy 
changes.  Some of these communications were more aggres-
sive than others.  For example, the director of Digital Strat-
egy, frustrated that Facebook had not removed a particular