There are guardrails. See e.g. Bantam Books v. Sullivan and NRA v. Vullo. They just don’t seem to encompass situations where the government and the recipient of the communications were essentially on the same page from (before) the start and the communications had no discernible effect on their decision-making with regards to these plaintiffs.
Isn’t that what she’s describing here:
“As already dis- cussed, the platforms moderated similar content long before any of the Government defendants engaged in the chal- lenged conduct. In fact, the platforms, acting inde- pendently, had strengthened their pre-existing content- moderation policies before the Government defendants got involved. For instance, Facebook announced an expansion of its COVID–19 misinformation policies in early February 2021, before White House officials began communicating with the platform. And the platforms continued to exercise their independent judgment even after communications with the defendants began. For example, on several occa- sions, various platforms explained that White House offi- cials had flagged content that did not violate company pol- icy. Moreover, the platforms did not speak only with the defendants about content moderation; they also regularly consulted with outside experts.
This evidence indicates that the platforms had independ- ent incentives to moderate content and often exercised their own judgment. To be sure, the record reflects that the Gov- ernment defendants played a role in at least some of the platforms’ moderation choices. But the Fifth Circuit, by at- tributing every platform decision at least in part to the de- fendants, glossed over complexities in the evidence.”
So, yes, the majority does not decide whether every related act or communication of every government official was an attempt at coercion or not. They decide that none of the communications affected these claimants because, essentially, the platform was already taking the actions the government sought, didn’t acquiesce to all of the government’s demands, and continued to take similar actions after the government moved on. Plaintiffs can’t show that it affected the platforms’ decision-making in their situations.
In my opinion, there’s no real way to substitute different parties and get around that, without significantly changing the circumstances and context of the communications.
E.g. the platform would have the most obvious case for standing, but the platform objecting to their treatment, wanting the content to remain, or even being ambivalent about the content’s presence are all significant changes to the circumstances that likely would have made a difference for these claimants.
P.S.- The whole generalized discussion of traceability is only 6 pages (8-14, as numbered on the pages, not the .pdf, beginning and ending about halfway down both pages) and I think her writing is very approachable.
