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Notes -
A month or so ago I remember someone here linking to the discovery documents in the Missouri Attorney General's lawsuit against Joe Biden, alleging the government is violating First Amendment rights by colluding with tech companies to censor the speech of private citzens. Those docs are here (warning: 711 page PDF).
At the time I was shocked at how this wasn't apparently a big story. It's trivial to scroll through the email exchanges and find examples of government agents reporting content to tech companies, who would then take the content down. There are obvious First Amendment issues that at the very least need to be publicly discussed, but most likely need to be prosecuted.
Well, it's finally getting some press. Lee Fang at the Intercept published an article today that, among other things, references these docs: https://theintercept.com/2022/10/31/social-media-disinformation-dhs/. The article also includes details on the organizational structures involved, including many documents out of DHS that detail their anti-misinformation operations.
A couple of choice quotes:
Why is it a violation of the First Amendment for the government to report content to a social media company which they believe violates that social media companies terms of service and for the company to subsequently remove the reported content after finding that it does? And what do you mean by "prosecuted"? What criminal laws have been violated?
Well clearly the government is engaged in viewpoint discrimination in choosing which content to flag, and clearly it's a state actor, so I guess the only question is whether the government sending a note to Twitter asking for it to remove the speech constitutes interference with your speech. I think it does... there is a power dynamic, and even if there weren't, the government is still attempting to silence your speech. (And in practice, it seems, succeeding.)
But Twitter can just... not remove the speech if it thinks the speech does not violate its policies. Maybe if Twitter was just rubber stamping government requests it would be different but even the Intercept article notes Twitter declined to remove a bunch of content the government flagged.
I don't see how that matters. The government shouldn't be in any way shape or form associated with censoring legal speech. It's not allowed to do that.
As a hyperbolic example, I am not allowed to ask someone to kill someone else. It doesn't matter if the person asked could say no. If they act on the request I am accessory to murder at the very least.
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