This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, August 31st,

2022. I'm Caleb Brown.

When Facebook muted content related to what was contained on Hunter Biden's

laptop, it was in response to an FBI suggestion about election misinformation.

For social media companies that take their cues from government nudges, the stakes are high

for profitability, for credibility, and for avoiding future jaw-boning for members of Congress.

Cato's Will Duffield has a forthcoming paper on the subject.

We spoke Monday.

On numerous occasions on this podcast you have mentioned the term

jaw-boning for the benefit of listeners remind us of what jaw-boning is in the context

of you know business or specifically social media.

Joboning is informal speech, often threats, demands, by a government official intended to prompt private action.

And the goal request or demand is usually something the government can't do itself.

All right, so in the context of social media,

what have we, where have we seen that?

Well, there's been a lot of demands for platforms

to remove unwanted content and under the First Amendment

this isn't speech that the government can censor or suppress but by threatening

private platforms they can often compel them to essentially do their

unconstitutional dirty work for them.

So there was this viral tweet that went out that sort of was Mark Zuckerberg talking to

Joe Rogan and saying that they had removed, suppressed, or otherwise deprioritized content associated with the Hunter

...