Is this a violation of the 1st Amendment or a way to skirt around it?
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857581503569929
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603857590299103232
Perhaps you should actually read Taibbi's work in this thread.
Imagine how this my play out in a future election with different candidates.
Or are they doing it under duress?
Of course it's the latter.
The US gov. has been threatening to take down social media companies for years. Do you think Twitter really wanted to upset them now?
The question to ask is whether any of these accounts would have been allowed if reported by people. There’s no evidence that the FBI was making threats that something otherwise allowed had to be removed.
The cop was telling the bouncer, "Throw that guy out."
And the bar owner did what the cop said, because the police department had threatened to shut down bar owners in the city for the last three years.
In principle, certainly it is not great for security services to meddle in public spaces. In reality, I am willing to believe that the federal government is a tiny fish in the sea of requests from local authorities, individual police departments, private individuals via reports, not least of all the legally persons we call corporations. I bet any day, Twitter's moderation teams are blanketed with requests from companies and businesses of every type and size, both advertisers and not. All equipped with legal teams that could potentially target Twitter.
In short, I find it to be performative virtue-signaling to be concerned about around a dozen small potatoes that the FBI asked for the mods to take a look at. Especially if this might just be cover for the real large-scale systemic censorships that occur at some deeper level that no FOIA or Taibbi journalism would be able to unearth. Especially when the PRISM programs are right there if you want something of substance to be outraged about. This, in comparison, is no different from a mom and pop store asking Twitter to go after an abusive account spreading slander about them. Litigiousness is an all-American custom. This didn't even trigger any warrant canaries. Hysteria over this is concern-trolling.
A bar owner that does not follow the instructions of the authorities is going to find their bar closed in short order because they have to comply with the law and with instructions by parties authorized to give them.
To paraphrase the trope that those that don't like Twitter are free to create their own: if you don't like the way society works then you are free to create your own. On Mars or something.
If that is true, that would make it government coercion. But no one has properly alleged anything with regards to Twitter on that analogue.
No, government should not be policing speech on private platforms, period. At most, they should concern themselves with clearly illegal things—threats of violence, child pornongraphy, etc. It doesn't matter whether or not they are being "balanced".
Twitter needs such entities to survive. Displeasing then is more existentially threatening than running afoul of the FBI.
Yes? When the CDC says "we recommend you get vaccinated against the flu", and you get vaccinated, you're acting voluntarily, despite the government recommendation.
It didn’t seem that the FBI were going into detail on any cases. I wondered if some were likely to be considered concerted foreign interference that they’d unearthed and policing that was within their remit. I assume there’s some overlap between Twitter’s ToS re misinformation and the FBI’s assessment, if that makes sense.
Would love to see how something like this would fare in a Supreme Court case.
Also, the guidelines ask you not to write comments like that.
There do exist direct orders to reveal or conceal information that do require a judge to sign, things like National Security Letters. It's remarkable that NSLs and other compelling documents don't get more play in these conversations. They actually are what people think these friendly emails are.
And to think the gov tried to have a department of disinformation.
That’s how you divide the country even further.
It's like when people "voluntarily" do things that cops ask during traffic stops that are beyond what's necessary by law. It's not that people want, they are just scared and don't want to get in trouble.
It's not performative virtue signalling to push back on a lesser threat just because you are not pushing back on the greater threat. The gov't has been very good at hiding the existence of these programs. We do not know much about PRISM, so there's less to go on. You need to push back whereever it occurs. We still have no idea how widespread this is. Not to mention, it is likely going on with google, facebook, instagram as well.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34026457
It sounds like most of this discussion is entirely driven by normative fancies rather than any actual knowledge of how these processes are already being run in the industry, let alone how the first amendment actually applies. For the latter, it would seem that a whole bevy of court cases undergird this whole endeavor:
https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/19/when-government-urges-p...
>Is this a violation of the 1st Amendment or a way to skirt around it?
Which specific security contractors? Which specific think tanks? The above assertion that you quoted makes several assertions, none of which (at least AFAICT) have any facts, data or evidence attached to them. Perhaps I'm missing something important? If so, what might that be?
What's more,. I receive multiple contacts from DHS daily[0]. And I (as an individual with minimal resources and little ability to "fight" the government) have never felt pressured by the Federal government to do anything.
I'd expect that corporations with multiple billions in revenue (like Twitter) and lawyers on staff would zealously protect their independence and reputation rather than being seen as shills for some shadowy "government conspiracy."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersecurity_and_Infrastructu...
An attempt by whom? Please be specific and name names.
Counter to which specific narrative? Please be specific and detailed.
Otherwise, you're just making unsupported claims. Not a good look, friend.
You keep referring to a "narrative," but you don't provide any details WRT to the ideas presented in such a "narrative."
As such, I have to reject your claims for lack of detail, facts or evidence. Feel free to change my mind by providing such things.
It doesn't matter, and I don't care, if the FBI requests were "even" on some partisan scoreboard.
>all they’re doing is politely asking for the company’s own policy to be enforced
This makes the incorrect assumption that the FBI's stated concerns are equal to their actual concerns. But this is the FBI we're talking about here. If they were actually investigating a crime it would be one thing. But randomly harassing private citizens by rules-lawyering is not appropriate.