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Comment by jakear | Hacker News Reader

Downvoted because it completely misses the point, which is that a private company should not be told by the government to restrict speech, even if (especially if) that speech is in conflict with the "official policy" the government has decreed.

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

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Shouldn’t it be up to the company? Congress made no law, no on forced Twitter from what I’m reading, they made a choice. That is their right.

Demanding that people hold an antagonistic or untrusting view of government speech is no different than any other sort of speech code demand.

I'm not demanding an antagonistic view, I'm requesting for antagonistic views to be vocalizable without the White House demanding you to be deplatformed.

We have direct evidence of federal pressure from multiple federal sources. We can see from what's been released that Twitter's leadership had concerns when pushing back even in the slightest. To assert that Twitter could have ignored that pressure and the requests that accompanied it without repercussions would be incredibly naive.

There's evidence, posted in the threads, of Twitter doing exactly that about numerous specific points. Twitter has, on multiple occasions, fought against states and government interests to unmask its users.

So, there exists evidence, and examples, that Twitter could have pushed back without repercussions. There is no evidence of Twitter having suffered for doing so.

Free speach isn't absolute. There's plenty of examples in life already where you can't say whatever you want.

Is it too much to ask that we don't add to that set?

It should be, or at the least it should be expanding and not contracting.

The argument here is that if something exists, it is good.

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