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Comment by choward | Hacker News Reader

> Personally, I think the word "censorship" should be reserved for governmental suppression but that ship sailed a long time ago.

This is the exact same argument used all the time to justify censorship. Most people agree about government censorship being bad and corporate censorship being fine.

However, what people miss is that this is government censorship. To think what's going on now isn't government suppression is completely naive. There are several examples of the US government influencing social media to have them censor. They admit it all the time.

Here's an example:

https://news.yahoo.com/psaki-white-house-flagging-covid-1856...

And this came out more recently:

https://www.mintpressnews.com/meet-ex-cia-agents-deciding-fa...

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"Corporate censorship" is "fine" because preventing corporations from moderating content is inconsistent with the 1st amendment.

I do not agree that those 2 articles support your point.

"“We’re flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation,” she [Psaki] said." It's still up to Facebook to determine wether or not to take down a post. There is a BIG difference between a government official reporting a post to Facebook and the government passing a law preventing a citizen from posting in the first place (which would obviously violate the 1st amendment).

The second article describes people who used to work in government now working for Social Media companies. It is, in my opinion, a stretch to call that government censorship. "The problem is that having so many former CIA employees running the world’s most important information and news platform is only one small step removed from the agency itself deciding what you see and what we do not see online –" Disagree. It is a BIG step to leap from "former government employees, including members of the CIA, work in trust, security and moderation" to "the CIA is controlling what is on social media."

Fair enough. But if the government is giving these companies suggestions, I find it hard to believe they wouldn't follow them. The government can retaliate against the companies in several ways.

I just came across this. I'm not sure about this source but the emails look legit.

https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/cdc-told...

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