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Comment by scifibestfi | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't matter which side, because isn't the problem that the government is doing an end run around the 1st Amendment?

If you don't think so now, you might in 2024. So it's time to care now.

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> Isn't the problem that the government is doing an end run around the 1st Amendment?

"The Biden team" was not the government in October 2020. (For that matter there is a "Biden team" right now that has no governmental capacity, that is, his re-election team, which is probably engaged in these same kind of activities with many platforms.) I have to wonder if these communications aren't just pretty normal? It might be easier to evaluate how alarmed we should be if any detail were provided by Taibbi at all.

If they are normal, that's even more concerning?

"Both parties had access to these tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were received and honored."

So was it ok for the Nazis to beat people up before they were elected into power?

The discussion could do without this tangent.

The prohibition on beating people up isn't limited to state actors. In fact, some might point out it's the opposite!

People keep conflating the 1st Amendment with the ideal of free speech. It doesn’t make it moral to suppress people’s speech because you’re legally not on the hook for it.

Huh?

The argument lefties like to make about free speech is that companies are free to choose who can use and what can be said on their platforms. Free speech only applies to government. Well, looks like government has been a part of it.

> Free speech only applies to government.

Buddy, it's called the first amendment. It isn't a hard read.

There's still a few weeks left in 2022. It's not too late for this to be the year when you learn that freedom of speech isn't just a law, it's a value.

Something that doesn't involve the government can still be a violation of the principle of freedom of speech, just like something that doesn't technically break any laws against discrimination can still be unfair or racist.

The tweets requested to be taken down, highlighted in the thread, were tweets requested for review as violating Twitter's terms of service.

Which they did, because they were naked pictures of Hunter Biden, being distributed without his consent.[1] They would also be illegal to distribute under revenge porn laws but were being distributed by Chinese-originating accounts.

[1] https://twitter.com/jason_paladino/status/159883024902577356...

Can you provide references to specific parts where elected representatives are doing something you think supports that view, rather than hand waving ‘ah hah’ when it doesn’t seem all that damning?

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