[tannhaeuser]

Merkel's view might be interpreted as pro-free speech at a glance, but the corollary of what she's saying is that no single entity should wield as much power as Facebook, Twitter, and Google at all. It's to be interpreted in the sense that additional legislative weight should be put behind disrupting the quasi-monopolistic dominance of these entities.

[kodah]

Having followed Angela Merkel's comments in the past I did not read her comments as "pro free speech". I read them as a concern about power. What happened this week, in the long term, will likely be looked on poorly by history.

[chipotle_coyote]

> What happened this week, in the long term, will likely be looked on poorly by history.

It might well be, but it's worth keeping in mind that this isn't mutually exclusive with what happened last week. I don't just mean the armed insurrection in the Capitol with the tacit support of a sitting president who lost his re-election bid; I mean that, for a full week, no government agency even made an official statement about that insurrection.

The real story of January 2021 may well be that private companies have stepped in to take action not merely because they could, but because the government refused to do so. While I share Ben Thompson's discomfort at private entities having this kind of power over the public sphere, the even more uncomfortable truth is that we -- both (primarily American) citizenry and (primarily American) government -- have ceded that power to them.

[kodah]

> but because the government refused to do so.

This is just narrative. Immediately after the Capitol riots people were trying to create narratives that the FBI and Capitol Hill police intentionally didn't do their job. That turned out not to be true, as the piece by Brian Stelter showed. This reasoning seems to be a further manipulated form of that. I would not expect the American government to be making public statements. Generally it's the president that addresses the public and obviously in this case he didn't.

[chipotle_coyote]

s/just narrative/plain statement of fact/

I didn't mention the FBI or the Capitol Police. There was an armed attack on Congress while it was in session and the federal government has not made an official public statement about it. Maybe you think there's nothing remotely weird about that. I do. Maybe you think no other administration would have had multiple briefings from law enforcement by now. I don't.

[kodah]

> Maybe you think there's nothing remotely weird about that. I do. Maybe you think no other administration would have had multiple briefings from law enforcement by now. I don't.

I do not. I would expect that in any terrorist incident, like 9/11 or others, that the President would be orchestrating a response. Clearly the President has been implicated in these things so that's not going to happen. You have Congress preparing impeachment documents and the FBI has responded to journalists, many of which created immediately hostile narratives about law enforcement. I do not know what else you're expecting them to do at this point.

If I were the FBI I would not be saying anything either. I'd have agents out in the field collecting evidence and arresting people, getting the story and having them turn in their coconspirators. If you make some sort of statement it prompts them to destroy evidence.

[chipotle_coyote]

All right, with the longer explanation I see where you're coming from on this. I would still stand by my observations (the part you quoted), though; there hasn't been even the most anodyne public statement expressing sympathy, calling for unity, vowing to make a full investigation, or the like. That this administration may be resisting making such statements because they are implicated in the attacks is pretty extraordinary.

[qsort]

> It's to be interpreted in the sense that additional legislative weight should be put behind disrupting the quasi-monopolistic dominance of these entities.

I tend to agree with your read, i.e. this has nothing to do with freedom-of-speech type issues and everything to do with Germany (and Europe more generally) positioning themselves against Big Tech; my only question is why now.

I'd love nothing more than to see Facebook/Twitter take a beating, but in this particular case there isn't really any strong argument that the government should have intervened and prevented Twitter from blocking Trump. Is this just an extreme case of carpe diem?