[tomohawk]

These are some of the very same government entities that were caught working with their surrogates at social media companies to censor speech that they declared misinformation. In their vernacular, misinformation may be 100% true information that goes against the narrative that they want to promote.

[rtkwe]

This again? They pointed out posts they believed violated places like Twitter's TOS and in the case of Twitter most of the time Twitter left them up and took no action against the material. A pretty shoddy censorship campaign in my opinion, it was blown up by Elon and the partisan actors he released the data to to support a political point they've been griping about for ages.

[pessimizer]

> This again?

You're talking about something that has been ruled by two courts as a massive first amendment violation, and is heading to the Supreme Court (if they even want it), as if it were a conspiracy theory.

And what political point are you even talking about, where do you learn to use this tone about serious issues, and why the fixation on celebrities like Musk?

[trust_bt_verify]

“ A federal district court in California dismissed the claims, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld that decision. The court of appeals ruled that although “it is possible to draw a causal line from the OEC’s flagging of the November 12th post to O’Handley’s suspension,” there was no “state action” for O’Handley to challenge under the First Amendment. California certainly exercised governmental authority when it flagged O’Handley’s tweet, the 9th Circuit reasoned, but it took no explicit action restricting his speech. And although Twitter did limit O’Handley’s speech, the court explained, it was following its own rules, rather than acting on the state’s behalf.”

https://www.scotusblog.com/2023/08/once-suspended-twitter-us...

This case?

Where did _you_ learn this tone of victimization when discussion issues with no references? I assume Musk was brought up as he has framed this issue in the same way the GP commenter did and he is the current owner of the company in question. You can dismiss that as celebrity fixation but it only undermines your own comment.

[jtbayly]

You didn't do a very good job trusting or verifying:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/supreme-court-co...

> The 5th Circuit appeals court saw things differently, finding that Biden administration "officials made express threats and, at the very least, leaned into the inherent authority of the President's office. The officials made inflammatory accusations, such as saying that the platforms were 'poison[ing]' the public, and 'killing people.' The platforms were told they needed to take greater responsibility and action. Then, they followed their statements with threats of 'fundamental reforms' like regulatory changes and increased enforcement actions that would ensure the platforms were 'held accountable.'... Given all of the above, we are left only with the conclusion that the officials' statements were coercive."

[trust_bt_verify]

“Be kind. Don't be snarky… Edit out swipes”

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Check them out when you have a chance. I _trusted_ ScotusBlog and the previous comments gave no references to _verify_.

[vorpalhex]

The legal issue is that they used the authority of the Whitehouse to do a "comply or there will be consequences".

We've all sat through various crappy powerpoints on ethics. That is plain and simple coercion. That's a first amendment issue and prohibited.

[ethanbond]

One minor hiccup being that the allegedly coerced entities didn’t claim (and still haven’t claimed) to have been coerced.

[perhonen]

perhaps because the threat of "comply or there will be consequences" worked.

[rtkwe]

Except most of the posts pointed out to places like Twitter stayed up with no moderation applied and the worst thing that's happened to Twitter recently is it's acquisition by Musk.

[vorpalhex]

Coercion doesn't have to be effective to be illegal, just like a bribe doesn't have to be accepted to be a bribe.

[mistrial9]

this is rewriting history .. the hysterical and high-pitched censorship of all things COVID-19 set a new low for the USA in modern times IMHO

California here

[EricE]

Why coerce when you can pay for it? The FBI just paid Twitter to do their dirty work.

[thieving_magpie]

I haven't looked into this issue in detail and was surprised to see such a brazen threat so I wanted to find information on your quote "comply or there will be consequences". I'm not able to see that in the context of white house or twitter. I haven't found anything close to it yet.

Could you point me to that information?

[throwoutway]

  > President Biden, press secretary Jen Psaki and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy later publicly vowed to hold the platforms accountable if they didn’t heighten censorship.

https://nclalegal.org/2023/01/the-white-house-covid-censorsh...

[DrThunder]

The government even ASKING about accounts and when they're going to be removed or censored is a clear violation of the 1st amendment. Whether it was done every single time they asked is irrelevant. One time is more than enough. Nothing is getting blow up, you just don't like the information you're getting because it goes against the team you're rooting for.

I don't want a government or DOJ in place that allows me to have my 1st amendment rights "most of the time" except the times they don't like me having it. Are you serious with this comment?

[throwoutway]

> President Biden, press secretary Jen Psaki and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy later publicly vowed to hold the platforms accountable if they didn’t heighten censorship.

> These emails establish a clear pattern: Mr. Flaherty, representing the White House, expresses anger at the companies’ failure to censor Covid-related content to his satisfaction. The companies change their policies to address his demands.

From a nonpartisan org: https://nclalegal.org/2023/01/the-white-house-covid-censorsh...

That Biden set up a "Disinformation Governance Board" is wild. 10 years ago I would have laughed and called it Orwellian, and then it happened

[gadders]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

[ejb999]

Not just 'working with' - demanding what speech should be taken down, AND paying them to do it.

[stainablesteel]

this story writes itself like a children's book

"beware of false information" said the people who keep the biggest secrets

[Ialdaboth]

By the way, notice how they pivoted from "false information" to "misinformation" years ago. It's transparently hilarious.

[vuln]

Don’t forget “disinformation”