Opinion | SCOTUS can't undo the damage the GOP have wrought for disinfo experts like me (2024)

When I learned I was named as a defendant in Missouri v. Biden, the predecessor to Murthy v. Missouri, a lawsuit alleging that the U.S. government, in coordination with independent researchers, had censored American citizens via social media, I was 36 weeks pregnant, extremely out of breath and in the midst of one of the worst weeks of my life. For days, the right-wing media and members of Congress had been incessantly lying about me and my new job as executive director of the Disinformation Governance Board. They falsely claimed that the board — set up to coordinate policy related to disinformation within the Department of Homeland Security — was actually set up to police Americans’ views and that I would be the country’s chief censor. The allegations resulted in relentless, vitriolic harassment, doxxing and credible death threats to me and my family.

The allegations resulted in relentless, vitriolic harassment, doxxing and credible death threats to me and my family.

But when I learned about the lawsuit, I laughed. As a defendant, I was named in a list of dozens of Biden administration officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, several Cabinet secretaries and the president himself. These were people I had never met. I’d never discussed policy with them, let alone conspired with them to establish a vast censorship regime. When the lawsuit was filed, I had served in government for eight weeks. My inclusion in the case so patently exposed the fact that the case was politically motivated that, at the time, it passed for funny. But I also realized it was meant to smear those named as treasonous and freeze work that had been set up to protect our information environment ahead of key events including the 2024 election. Republicans were playing the long game.

A few weeks later, I resigned from DHS, and on those grounds the government removed me from the case. But when the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued a broad injunction in the case last summer, prohibiting any U.S. government officials from making contact with social media platforms or certain independent researchers except in a few narrow exceptions, I was worried. A ruling like this would clearly have a chilling effect on civil servants and researchers working in this space. If you ran afoul of it, then you could put your career, your financial security and your family’s safety on the line.

Since the original case was filed, the lie that the government was conspiring with a shadowy cabal of researchers to censor conservatives had grown. The case was one of several making that claim, and it was supported by breathless, baseless publication after publication of the so-called “Twitter Files” making the same wild allegations. The lawsuits and the “reporting” all bore a resemblance to fan fiction: They relied on context collapse and outright fabrications, amplifying some facts, ignoring others, and mixing them with misleading and false statements to create the world their authors wanted to believe existed.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court finally ruled 6-3 to throw out the case on the grounds that the plaintiffs lacked standing. In the majority opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett surgically dismantled each of the plaintiffs’ fact-free claims. “The plaintiff cannot rest on ‘mere allegations,’” she wrote, “but must instead point to factual evidence.” This will make it more difficult in the future for charlatans and fraudsters to make such arguments in court without proof.

But the damage this case and others like it have caused cannot be undone with a pronouncement from the Supreme Court. Twenty-five months after I resigned from government — the entirety of my son’s short life — my family still contends with regular threats. I’ve been forced to spend tens of thousands of dollars on legal fees in various challenges that have stemmed from the lie that I wanted to censor my fellow Americans: to get a protective order against a cyberstalker, to defend myself in a frivolous civil suit, to secure representation in Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio’s absurd investigation of disinformation researchers.

My colleagues across academia and think tanks are dealing with similar challenges. Stanford University’s Internet Observatory, one of the nation’s pre-eminent organizations studying online harms, was forced to shut down due to these baseless allegations because of the financial and political pressure it faced. I know from my conversations with other researchers and philanthropists that similar worries and outright self-censorship are now common. While the plaintiffs in Murthy v. Missouri and others across the internet have claimed “censorship,” it is those studying disinformation who have had their speech silenced.

With its decision to throw out Murthy, the Supreme Court put the ball back in Congress’ court. There are legitimate questions about social media oversight, transparency and the limits of public-private cooperation on matters of speech, and Congress is where they should be debated.

There are legitimate questions about social media oversight, transparency and the limits of public-private cooperation on matters of speech, and Congress is where they should be debated.

Over the past eight years, our legislators have punted that responsibility and opted instead for political theatrics that are high on fantasy and low on facts. While we won’t see robust social media regulation passed before the 2024 election, we can hope that with a new Congress installed in January, members can finally begin work on this issue, which is crucial to preserving democratic discourse in the digital age.

In the meantime, it will be up to all Americans to guard this election from disinformation threats. Be vigilant about emotional content; the most engaging posts online are often the most enraging ones. Don’t share what you’re not sure of. Wait for multiple sources to verify breaking news before amplifying it.

Since Congress isn’t going to respond, we’re now the last line of defense in this information war.

It’s a war we must win. Democracy is at stake.