Issue One reacts to Supreme Court’s Murthy v. Missouri decision

Following today’s Supreme Court decision in Murthy v. Missouri, a landmark case addressing the role that government officials can play in communicating with social media companies, Issue One Founder and CEO Nick Penniman issued the following statement:

“The government has a right to communicate with the private sector about potential risks to the public. Whether those risks relate to national security, communicable diseases, or our elections, the Court’s ruling will enable the government to speak and the corporations to act, if they choose to.

“False, misleading, and dangerous information about our elections and the people who run them have proliferated across social media platforms for much of the past decade, driven by foreign adversaries and domestic bad actors who have sought to erode public confidence in American democracy. And in recent years, platforms have also dramatically downsized teams responsible for election integrity and have failed to take action on policies to prevent the spread of false election information. This has made it exponentially harder for the average voter to determine fact from fiction about how, when, and where to vote, particularly during such a critical election year. That’s why maintaining open lines of communication between tech companies, the federal government, and key stakeholders to readily share information, identify emerging threats and cybersecurity vulnerabilities, and work together to disseminate accurate information is vitally important.

“Such public-private collaborations are essential for the integrity of our elections and the safety of both election workers and voters. Bad actors have never had a more powerful tool for societal disruption at their fingertips as they do now with unregulated and unchecked social media, and it’s urgent our leaders do more to combat those who wish to confuse, manipulate, and divide American voters.”