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Events • November 2, 2023 

# Government Censorship by Proxy 

During the pandemic, governments placed significant public and private pressure on social media companies to remove speech protected by the First Amendment, blurring the line between acceptable government speech and unconstitutional censorship by proxy. Concerns about this “jawboning” only grew with the recent decisions in *Missouri v. Biden* finding that the pressure applied by various government actors likely violated the First Amendment. But this case also revealed the limitations of broadly prohibiting government communications with private companies or merely relying on the courts to police government abuse. Join us as the panel discusses the options available to policymakers and why greater transparency is essential to combating such censorship.

[![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) 
This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/). 

##### Featuring 

[![Media Name: andrew-grossman-square.jpg](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/authors/crops/andrew-grossman-square.jpg?itok=GxuVbbSO)](/people/andrew-grossman) 

##### [Andrew M. Grossman](/people/andrew-grossman)

Former Adjunct Scholar, Cato Institute

![Kristin-A-Shapiro](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2023-09/Kristin-A-Shapiro.jpg?itok=NIDAogyc) 

##### Kristin A. Shapiro 

Senior Fellow, Independent Women’s Forum

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](https://twitter.com/mrsshap) 

[![David-Inserra-cropped.jpg](/sites/cato.org/files/styles/author_picture/public/2023-11/David-Inserra-cropped.jpg?itok=UVcZA19i)](/people/david-inserra) 

##### [David Inserra](/people/david-inserra)

Fellow for Free Expression and Technology, Cato Institute

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](https://x.com/dr_inserra)