[benmmurphy]

Even if these people were not joking it is not clear that this is illegal. The statutes that try to prevent election misinformation likely violate the first amendment or they may not apply in these specific cases. The FBI should be prosecuting people so these statutes have a chance of being challenged in court and these people have a chance to defend themselves. Either that or twitter should have informed them that the report was originated by the US government. If this information was never leaked then the people effected by the FBI’s secret speech suppression may never have known and would never had a chance to contest it in court.

[philwelch]

> The statutes that try to prevent election misinformation

Do such statutes even exist? I suspect the answer is no, and that the FBI is just engaging in extralegal, extrajudicial monkeyshines.

> If this information was never leaked then the people effected by the FBI’s secret speech suppression may never have known and would never had a chance to contest it in court.

From a certain point of view (which seems distressingly popular on HN lately) that’s considered a feature and not a bug.

[Apocryphon]

https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/safety-resources/sca...

> Intentionally deceiving qualified voters to prevent them from voting is voter suppression—and it is a federal crime.

> Bad actors use various methods to spread disinformation about voting, such as social media platforms, texting, or peer-to-peer messaging applications on smartphones. They may provide misleading information about the time, manner, or place of voting. This can include inaccurate election dates or false claims about voting qualifications or methods, such as false information suggesting that one may vote by text, which is not allowed in any jurisdiction.

> Help defend the right to vote by reporting any suspected instances of voter suppression—especially those received through a private communication channel like texting—to your local FBI field office or at tips.fbi.gov.

Guess this is in their purview.

[philwelch]

In that case I’m with benmmurphy: they should be enforcing the law by actually prosecuting people in court (or, to be pedantic, performing arrests and investigations to support a prosecution by a US Attorney), not engaging in extrajudicial monkeyshines.

[Apocryphon]

I agree with the spirit of this, but the point is this neither extrajudicial nor monkeyshines, nor out of the ordinary, which means this entire discussion has been bamboozled by business as usual, while more interesting controversies have been neglected.

[philwelch]

For the past couple of years, the defense of Twitter’s aggressive moderation has been that Twitter is a private company and that the First Amendment only stops the government from censoring speech. Now we know that Twitter was doing this, in part, at the behest of a government agency. If this isn’t “out of the ordinary” it’s only because of the FBI’s well-established reputation for doing far worse things.

[Apocryphon]

As Snowden’s revelations illustrate, Big Tech is inherently compromised. Caveat emptor. I shed no tears for Twitter. I know that they are likely constantly moderating not only on the behalf of the federal government, but quite possibly your own local authorities, but also for any business who might have an interest and hold leverage over Twitter. Including individuals as well.

In this milieu, I find all of this alarmism to be misplaced, and thus worth calling out.