This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, October 23,

I'm Caleb Brown.

How do we draw the line between mundane freedom of speech

for government officials and jawboning. That's compelling compliance from

private actors in ways that would not be legal or constitutional if done

legislatively. In the debate over how online speech and the platforms that host it are regulated,

Cato's David and Sarah helps delineate where speech ends and jawboning begins.

This is a subject I've discussed a lot with our colleague Will Duffield and Jennifer

Huddleston, but it is jaw-boning, a very sort of arcane word for essentially when the government exerts an unclear but

undue pressure. But undo pressure, minus legislation, minus regulation, it's just sort of flexing in a way to try to cow compliance from the private sector

actors that they would like to cow. Is about right yeah that's that's exactly right

when we talk about jawbone it is a bit of an arcane term I think an easier to

understand term would be censorship by proxy when you, when is the government

conjoling the private sector to effectively do

what the government can't do itself? And so the government's not

allowed to censor people because of the First Amendment, but if it can just, you know, strongly suggest

if it can coerce you the private sector into doing what the government wants, that's still still illegal but it's harder to notice that because it's

often secretive and not public.

So in years past what are some clear-cut examples that we can point to?

Because as you say, it's kind of fuzzy,

and the government probably prefers it that way.

It's something that they can't do through these other channels,

...