[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.