Taibbi also brings that up -
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1603890210252668928
> An FBI agent just reached out with a key point about the “gross” subservience of Twitter before the FBI: “A lot of companies we deal with are adversarial to us. Like T-Mobile is totally adversarial. They love leaking things we're saying if we don't get our process right.” (1/2)
> “I feel like that’s the default position. People used to get mad about that in the Bureau, but — they're supposed to represent their clients and their customers. Why in the hell would you expect them to make it easy on you? Do the right thing. Do it the right way.”
Sounds like Twitter just went along with it, without coercion. Which you may choose to criticize as weakness or cowardice, but maybe that's just how they chose to do business.
> I don’t disagree with what you posted at all.
Then you agree that your earlier statement "That goes well beyond the remit of the FBI and violates numerous norms of law enforcement influence over public speech" is wrong and baseless, given the legal context that I have provided.
> And what makes me more uncomfortable is when people read the story and say “so what? It’s a nothingburger”.
For the record, my stance is that it's not a nothingburger, but it is so insignificant so as to provide a convenient distraction for actual malicious acts that are going on, like the Z-Library shutdown. And that all of this is underwhelming, much like this other poster's opinion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34024363
"A whole bunch of mildly unsatisfactory situations" seems to be an adequate summation of this whole situation. Which this thread, like all culture wars, has made a mountain out of.
No I don’t agree. “Norms” are separate from the legal context you gave.
If no coercion took place, that doesn’t make what the FBI did “ok” even if no laws were broken.
Like my earlier analogy, if my local cops started asking businesses to kick people out (and the businesses agreed) that’s a major problem, even if not illegal.
Law enforcement’s job is to identify crimes and arrest people.
When their scope starts expanding into working with willing private companies to silence individuals who have committed no crime, that should worry everyone, whether it happens with Twitter or your local bar.
It’s amazing to see a normally anti-law enforcement HN suddenly rally to the FBI’s defense.
The problem is that people are getting at the FBI for the wrong things. They should be getting mad at the shutting down of Z-Library instead, which holds far more impact for far more people than the two dozen accounts discussed in the OP (who weren’t even all suspended). When people are concerned about petty crimes, the big ones get unnoticed.