[TheOtherHobbes]

That's sometimes called having a public conversation.

Entity A makes a public statement. Entity B makes a public reply.

Public comments are reframed, misrepresented, misunderstood, and recontextualised with varying degrees of honesty and good/bad faith all the time.

I don't think anyone is going to get very far arguing that's not acceptable, because it seems like a straightforward free speech issue.

No one is yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theatre here, or calling for people of a certain race to be rounded up into concentration camps.

It's a political statement about a political statement, and in a free speech context, that's absolutely fine.

[emn13]

Nothing about free speech is straightforward. At least, that's my take: I don't believe free speech by itself has a lot of value. It's just noise, until you can interpret it; it's the message that matters. And in lots of ways, this isn't controversial: when you prevent plagiarism, protect trademarks, punish libel, enforce honesty in advertising, or root out academic fraud you're doing so because free speech alone isn't enough.

Similarly here; just because some people may have a message they should be allowed to proclaim does not mean they should be allowed to (effectively) silence others, nor that they should be able to misrepresent the origins of their message.

I don't think their message is particularly objectionable, but I don't think it's reasonable for it to change the bull's message so severely. Separately I don't think it's healthy for something so context sensitive to be pushed so publicly without proper attribution. Then again, I don't think advertising is good for us, either, so on that front I realize that there's definitely some disagreement.