Lawsuit reveals vast censorship scheme by Big Tech and the federal government | Hacker News Reader

Lawsuit reveals vast censorship scheme by Big Tech and the federal government

nypost.com

You need a springboard for the logical leaps this article insinuates.

More like "It would be nice if..." and then a "oh sure, no problem. That makes sense to us too" than any sort of coercion or something called a scheme.

I'm skeptical of this article as well, but I think what they are trying to say is that the government forced the social media companies' hands by influencing popular opinion which could cause backlash on the companies.

Right now I don't think that reaches the level of violating the first amendment, but I can understand that argument at least.

I think if we just completely brush away the conservative talking points, the people who consume it will just see us as dishonest and being unwilling to discuss what they think are issues.

I'm confused about how these AGs even have standing. If the government is coercing Big Tech into censoring for them, wouldn't Big Tech be the party whose 1st Amendment rights were violated? And if Big Tech was not coerced, how can it be claimed that this is anything but their current 1st Amendment right to perform this censorship?

Private companies are not required to abide by the first amendment. However it is illegal for the government to ask private companies to censor. The old press secretary, Psaki, went on TV and admitted their administration regularly asks social media to censor on the administrators behalf. That is how the AGs have standing... The press secretary told everyone there were doing it.

I am pretty sure that your second sentence is not true. The government can ask private companies to censor in my understanding. The private companies do not have to comply, but if they wish to, they can. Why do you think it is illegal to ask? Can you back that up?

I took a look and I am not sure anymore. I found this: https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/79102/what-is-the-na...

The first answer links to a couple different cases. I am not a lawyer but it does seem that a private company can be considered a state actor in certain cases. However I cannot find anything to say whether an administration asking a social media company to censor ideas they don't like would would be considered one of those cases or not. Seems like until a court rules on it, it could go either way.

We're reading the responses to that stack exchange question pretty differently if your last line is your takeaway...in my opinion it would be extremely unlikely for a court to rule against "Big Tech" in this case.

So the way I read the accepted answer is a private company can censor. They can make up their own rules and do what they want even if the government is not allowed to do the same. However there is nothing in any of the cases referenced (that I could find) that deals with whether the government can tell a company to censor something and that would other wise be allowed under the company's own rules.

For example I make a post on HN. It follows the community guidelines and rules. The post is factually accurate as well. But it pisses the ATF off so they request that HN censor the post and any other future post that may be made about the topic. HN news decides its better to not fight the ATF and censors the post SOLEY due to the governments request. In my eyes this type of situation is the government directly censoring a post they don't like. You remove the governments request from the equation and the post would not be censored as its follows the site rules.

As I can't find any existing ruling that deals with the situation above, I said that we won't know until the courts decide.

edit: spelling

FYI this was admitted by Psaki during a press conference, and referenced several times later.

Anyone paying attention should already be aware of what occurred. Whether or not it was illegal will be for the courts to decide.

Here is the video from 7/15/21 if anybody is interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0aWGsxyYPg

I'm no lawyer, but the article seems to imply is that the government forced these private companies to comply with silencing critics with some sort of punishment. I imagine that probably would be a violation of the 1st amendment.

But I didn't see that explicitly stated that there was a punishment threatened. Instead it seems like the following happened:

- the government intel experts gave the tech companies presentations of disinformation techniques and campaigns

- the government identified some people privately they felt might be exhibiting extreme disinformation tactics

- after several months the government started making a big deal about disinformation in the public to try to influence popular opinion about disinfo on social media in general

- fear of popular opinion backlash is what drove these companies to deplatform some people

I'm not sure if that qualifies as violating someone's first amendment rights (which, remember, only protects against the government from punishing you, not private organizations silencing you).

Though please correct me if I'm missing something! I'm trying to understand this stuff better.

If the government had forced the private companies to comply, it would be the private companies who had standing to sue, not the end parties who are currently suing, I would imagine.

Probably, unless you could maybe prove that the private companies were acting as agents of the government.if that was the case then I guess it would be the government's responsibility.

I think I remember seeing on the internet that was a thing that could happen. And the internet never lies, of course.

Four paragraphs in and this is pretty obviously bullshit, since Biden wasn't yet elected at the time they allege his administration was pressuring social media companies:

> Victims of the Biden-Big Tech “censorship enterprise” include The Post, whose Hunter Biden laptop exposé was suppressed by Facebook and then Twitter in October 2020 after the FBI went to Facebook, warning it with great specificity to watch out for a “dump” of Russian disinformation, pertaining to Joe Biden, with an uncanny resemblance to our stories.

> “We allege that top-ranking Biden administration officials colluded with those social media companies to suppress speech about the Hunter Biden laptop story, the origins of COVID-19, the efficacy of masks, and election integrity,” is how the lawsuit was summarized by intrepid Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who is leading the action.

Biden took office in January of 2021. So it makes no sense that "top-ranking Biden administration officials" would have "colluded with social media companies" in October of 2020… because the Biden administration didn’t exist yet. The FBI that "went to Facebook" would have been Trump's FBI!

This article states a ton of things that are very clearly opinions as if they are hard facts. For example:

>His evidence-backed view that school lockdowns were being driven by teacher unions, not data, and would do long-term harm to children, has been proven correct. Similarly, his view was correct that vaccines were not stopping the transmission of COVID and thus mandates were pointless. Yet he was silenced, and no debate was allowed.

It really undermines the message here.

It seems strange that they would post this claim without verifying its veracity since they are a news outlet, do you have evidence they are opinions and not factually based?

What do you mean? You can’t verify the veracity of an opinion.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

"vaccines were not stopping the transmission of COVID and thus mandates were pointless"

I don't think it's very controversial to acknowledge that "mandates were pointless" is an opinion. There are many ways one might legitimately debate mandate policies, but using the claim that vaccines didn't stop transmission completely sure smells like a bad faith argument (again, of an opinion, not a fact).

For some reasons I stopped reading after I saw it's about a fox news video.

It's the NY Post (aka Fox News print edition, same conglomerate) 'reporting' on a Fox News story.

Just FYI, this is a variation of the Genetic Fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy

Why would I spend my energy and time to investigate a story from a source with such a low credibility(i.e fox news)? It's like reading Russia Today to understand the reasons and the current status of the war in Ukraine. Surely I can find something of value there but who has time and skills to extract that value?

Lawsuit alleges vast censorship scheme. That's not the same as revealing or proving, even if the thing actually exists.

It's quite ironic that this post about censorship was flagged

Bad biased article written by supporters of the grifters pretending this lawsuit has a snowball's chance in hell, shouldn't be on HN

Nothing to see here. Fake news. Move along now.

Ultimately, I doubt any changes will come out of this. What would be the ideal outcome (or even possible positive changes) from this lawsuit?

They're trying literally every possible avenue to socialize social media without doing the obvious (socializing social media).

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