Sure sounds like a relationship where the power only goes one direction and the Flaherty was very comfortable demanding whatever he wanted.
> All, especially given the Journal's reporting on your internal work on political violence spurred by Facebook groups, I am also curious about the new rules as part of the "overhaul."
Referring to this[1] WSJ article that details explicit calls to violence on FB. He then specifically quotes part of FB's response in his question
> I am seeing that you will no longer promote civic and health related groups, but I am wondering if the reforms here extend further?
So Flaherty was absolutely not accusing Facebook "of causing 'political violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19 claims", he was accusing FB of hosting actual calls to violence.
[0]https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63290154/174/1/missouri...
I don’t see how you got there. I see literal demands for action in the tone of someone giving orders to a subordinate.
The idea that an imperious tone somehow proves a power imbalance is hilarious to anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of these requests from regular people. “I demand an answer right now” is what angry diners say when a restaurant runs of the special. It’s the tone that people adopt to imply power when they don’t actually have power, but want to seem like they do. Which is a common, and legal, mode of speaking in everyday life.
Or am I now supposed to believe that if you anger Sheila at the DMV the IRS will audit you?
Craig's boss is the highest executive power in the country. Most of their work is handled by aides and subordinates like Craig, with authority delegated from their office. The boss only directly makes the important decisions. You are being disingenuous by claiming Craig is a innocent, powerless trigger-happy drone. And if you have lived in small towns, expect to receive worse service or discrimination from Sheila in future. The highest power in the country cannot be held to the same standard as a county clerk (and frankly speaking, most DMV employees need more training in customer service and have their compensation tied to overall productivity and performance, lots of fat to be trimmed there, both literal and metaphorical).
Have we already forgotten that it’s the left pushing for the censorship?
When will the left quit trying to flamebait and start focusing on repairing the divisions caused by attempting to demonize the other side.
Quit being a democrat, my point stands.
I mean, sure, in terms of jurisprudence here the lack of actual tort may indeed mean that there is no legal outcome, but evidence a desire to do something is a pretty good justification for investigating if there were cases where you did do it. And in the court of public opinion, it's very damning. I certainly won't be saying "no harm, no foul"
The judge literally cited Biden saying, "they're killing people" as coercion, which is a bald-faced lie.
If you read the examples cited, nothing even remotely comes close to a layperson interpretation of coercion, and I believe the legal definition is more rigorous, not less.
The government asking them to remove specific posts and accounts and demote others is pretty clearly that.
That's just the straightforward stuff. That's without the IRS deciding your corporate profit statements deserve extra scrutiny, and the FCC deciding to question whether you really qualify for section 230, and and and...
You can be right. They can still make your life very difficult if they decide to. And it will be very hard to prove that that's what they're doing. And even if you can, you probably aren't going to get the money back that the court cases cost, and you definitely aren't getting back the time and management attention it cost.
So, not legally coercive. But still kind of coercive, even though legally it has no force.
I mean, yes, you're right, the White House director of digital strategy, taken by himself, can go jump in the lake as far as Facebook or Twitter are concerned. Even given all the people under him, that's still true. The question is, to what degree is he speaking for the people over him? How many layers are there between him and the president? I'd guess somewhere from 0 to 2, though I admit that's a guess. Can he cause trouble on his own? No. But the one giving him orders may be able to give orders to others.
Basically this is arguing that the mere existence of government has a chilling effect, which it demonstrably does, but isn't really something you can make go away with an injunction. Hell, what's stopping the Biden admin from enacting this punishment scheme on these people for getting this injunction?
From the company's side, they have some indication that they are likely to be backed by the courts if it comes to that, so they have some more confidence in telling the administration to get lost - not perfect, but more than none. (They're not going to be less willing to say no after this court ruling.)
So, yes, the Biden administration could keep going. But that's unlikely to play well, either in the courts or in the press. The Biden administration is not a dictatorial regime; they face an election in 14 months. That gives them more incentive to "control the narrative", true, but it also gives them incentive to not be visibly seen as bullying the social media.
There's no way Biden's quote is coercive. Zero way whatsoever.
You're welcome to judge the appropriateness of the event as a whole however you want! I'm not over the moon about it either. I wasn't arguing that it's wonderful this interaction occurred.
the one originating from the dude who used a swear word?
or the one originating from the company who felt comfortable ignoring the dude and the request?
after all, anyone can feel comfortable demanding anything, what matters is what they get:
e.g. TFG felt comfortable demanding that his political rivals be imprisoned, did he get it?
Hopefully this ruling applies to more types of government speech.
The Government cannot demand that political speech be censored without running afoul of the First Amendment.
If you recall, the courts didn't allow Trump to block critical accounts on Twitter.
For example:
> We released a list of 354 names Maine Senate Angus King wanted taken down for reasons like “Rand Paul visit excitement,” “followed by [former Republican opponent Eric] Brakey,” and my personal favorite, “mentions immigration.” For balance we also released a letter from a Republican official at the State Department, Mark Lenzi, who tells Twitter about 14 real Americans “you may want to look into and delete.”
https://www.racket.news/p/capsule-summaries-of-all-twitter
This behavior clearly violates the First Amendment.
(Side note: The Angus King stuff is a misrepresentation. The screenshots are from a spreadsheet - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS1PbfNEqDCK... - in which a column indicates how the account first came to the King campaign's attention, not the reason they think they warranted action.)
This would make quite a few Congressional hearings unconstitutional. For example: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/4-tech-industry-titan...
It'd probably also apply to the President saying "lock her up" about a private citizen. Is that unconstitutional pressure from an elected official?
> What does that even mean, for the US Government to have a right to speak without fear of action being taken against it by the US Government?
It means stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_or_Debate_Clause
Well, maybe, if you ignore the Constitutional carte blanche for Congressional proceedings of the Article I Speech and Debate Clause.
It's quite common for elected officials to criticize private citizens and businesses. To be concrete: Ted Cruz (and a bunch of others) publicly pressured the NFL over players kneeling at games, in a clear attempt to suppress First Amendment expression by said players, without any hint of consequences.
They can criticize all they like.
What they can't do is order the political speech of citizens be censored.
Agreed. That doesn't appear to have happened. Even the worst examples the Twitter Files sort of reporting could dig up is some loud huffing and puffing followed by a :rolleyes: emoji and inaction from various social networks.
That appears to be exactly what has been happening.
It seems we disagree on this point.
None of the Twitter Files involve a government order to censor speech.
There's begging, cajoling, suggesting, implying, etc., but they don't have the power to order in most of these cases, and that's evidenced by the fact that quite a bit of the time the social networks said no.
Do feel free to cite an actual order to suppress speech that we can specifically discuss.
Several of the Twitter Files have given concrete examples of Government officials providing lists of specific examples of speech and/or speakers that they want censored.
Again, here's an example that has already been provided in this sub-thread:
> We released a list of 354 names Maine Senate Angus King wanted taken down for reasons like “Rand Paul visit excitement,” “followed by [former Republican opponent Eric] Brakey,” and my personal favorite, “mentions immigration.” For balance we also released a letter from a Republican official at the State Department, Mark Lenzi, who tells Twitter about 14 real Americans “you may want to look into and delete.”
https://www.racket.news/p/capsule-summaries-of-all-twitter
All of which were backed up by threats from both parties that if the platforms do not do more to censor speech the politicians will get rid of the legal immunity platforms have traditionally had (going back to the postal service, telegraph systems, and the phone company) that those platforms are not legally liable for the contents of the speech of others sent through their system.
The First Amendment distinction here being what, exactly? The President can chant "lock her up" but it's a violation if their FBI director does it?
[citation needed]
The IRS disagrees, but obviously different legal contexts have different definitions, but I am aware of none supporting the distinction you are trying to make.
In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Supreme Court held “that when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.”
Obviously, speech and debate clause controls for Federal Congress members.
Politicians demand censorship all the time, as is their right. They usually don't get what they want, as they don't typically have the right to enforce their desires.
For example: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9619449/Rand-Paul-b...
> Rand Paul blasted Twitter on Tuesday for not immediately taking down Richard Marx’s tweet from Sunday in which he offered to buy drinks for the Kentucky neighbor who assaulted the Republican senator in 2017.
He can demand. They can say no. Both are First Amendment protected actions.
Sorry, but that just won't fly.
> A federal appeals court in Manhattan says President Trump cannot block critics from his Twitter account, calling it "unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination."
In a 29-page ruling on Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court's decision that found that Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked certain Twitter users
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739906562/u-s-appeals-court-r...
Trump may have wanted to silence criticism, but he didn't get away with it, even on his own personal account.
Blocking wasn't permissible because it restricted access by citizens to official announcements; it's like banning someone from coming to a town hall meeting or visiting Congress's website.
Trump was blocking those who replied to his comments with takes that were critical of himself or of his policies.
He was silencing critics.
It wasn't allowed.
They were impermissible as viewpoint-based censorship of a designated public forum in violation of the First Amendment, you are wrong that it was “for other reasons”.
This is a misrepresentation of the facts. Trump was only using his "personal" twitter during his presidency so the court considered it his de-facto presidential account.
If Trump had done like other presidents and tried to keep official Presidential business off his personal Twitter account he would have been to block anyone he wanted to.
A judge has ordered that the government not do the in-dispute things while the dispute is being ajudicated in court.
it seems Facebook was more polite than that, instead just ignoring the random government bureaucrat when it suited them
also, in American courts, it is the actual harm that matters. No harm, no standing, no court case.
Traditionally, yes, although that didn't stop SCOTUS from ruling last week in a case in which the plaintiff experienced no harm (not to mention admitted to perjury).
> When Smith's suit was filed at the federal district court in 2016, she had not begun designing websites, nor had she received any requests to design a wedding website for a same-sex couple. In 2017, her lawyers ADF filed an affidavit from Smith stating that she had received such a request several days after the initial filing, and appended a copy of the request. Smith never responded to the request, and has stated that she feared she would violate Colorado's law if she were to do so. However, the name, email, and phone number on the online form belong to a man who has long been married to a woman, and who stated that he never submitted such a request, as reported by The New Republic on June 29, 2023, a day before the Supreme Court's decision was released.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/sham-customer...
> That narrative was thrown into question last week after The New Republic published an article on Stewart, who denied ever having reached out to Smith. It quoted him saying he was a web designer who has been married to a woman for years.
> “I wouldn’t want anybody to … make me a wedding website?” the man identified only as Stewart told the magazine. “I’m married, I have a child — I’m not really sure where that came from? But somebody’s using false information in a Supreme Court filing document.”
Perjury is probably a stretch, and it's unlikely to affect the ruling any.
Perjury is not a stretch. The case was revised before it reached SCOTUS, but her original court filing claimed that she had received a request from a specific named individual to design a website for his gay wedding.
Not only has that individual - who is a heterosexual man already married to a woman - denied ever making a request, but the plaintiff herself later claimed in court documents, under penalty of perjury, that she had not yet received a request to design a wedding website from a gay couple.
The case as presented to SCOTUS did not contain any perjurous claims, but the original case undeniably did.
> Smith sued in 2016 saying she wanted to design wedding websites but was concerned that the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act would force her to put together websites for same-sex weddings, as well. She said she wanted to post a statement on her website making clear her opposition to doing so.
The claim about the email is in a later filing as an update. Its existence doesn't seem to be in question; its provenance does, but that could happen without the plaintiff's involvement. You'd have to prove they knew it was bullshit.
> A Colorado web designer who the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday could refuse to make wedding websites for gay couples cited a request from a man who says he never asked to work with her.
A pre-emptive request backed up by a fake customer does not equal standing (in a sane court but SCOTUS left sanity behind a couple of justice appointments ago.)
If I'm reading this right, the plaintiffs felt harmed because their information they might have received was effectively censored. Not all of the sources were, but enough of them were removed that would have been published without the government's intervention.
To this specific topic, could you clarify your position? Do you think the same is applicable to a police officer or an IRS agent?
The specific thing that made me think your statement was contradictory was police. The left was demanding police to be accountable seemingly five minutes ago. For most police departments, I think they went too far in saying the whole system was corrupt. I think there's at least an argument to be made about the extent of the Biden administration's involvement, but certainly you think the person doing the coercion should be punished, right?
It seems to me that any case of a "random bureaucrat" attempting to coerce a citizen or company outside of their civil mandate should be punished to the maximum extent of the law. If there isn't a criminal punishment already for this, one should be created and applied retroactively because it should be common sense.
in the case of a police officer, our current society is one in which police officers can and often do immediately assault and/or shoot and/or kill you for doing or being something they don't like, regardless of whether you're right or wrong, and they can do so with little question and no internal criticism or retribution or punishment, which is an entirely different issue in and of itself
the same is obviously not true of Steve who works at the IRS. Steve would be tried for murder. So would Flaherty.
Not when that someone is the government or its representative. The act of asking can itself be a violation of your rights as there’s an implication that if you do not comply their may be some unknown ramifications.
Judges are savvy enough to know that threats need not be verbalized to be received.
a GOP-controlled congress did, and that party remains the most opposed to section 230
Co-sponsored by Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, the Health Misinformation Act targets a provision in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects platforms from being held liable for what their users post in most cases.
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/22/1019346177/democrats-want-to-...
It's obvious government infringement on free speech from both sides when you take off your red or blue colored glasses.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/502...
S.5020 - A bill to repeal section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934.
Sponsor: Sen. Graham, Lindsey [R-SC]
you're now free to respond to the substance of the post you replied to: it was, in fact, a GOP controlled Senate which performed the action in question
Just to back this up, the ACLU also warned against the dismantlement of section 230 as a serious threat to freedom of speech, and I agree with them on this topic.
Here: https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-warns-harm-free-spe...
And Here: https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/section-230-is-this-th...
And Here: https://www.aclu.org/documents/aclu-letter-congress-opposing...
They here refers to the Biden administration, unless you're alleging the Biden administration conspired with a Republican Congress to coerce social networks into silencing posts that Republicans themselves were in favor of
it's laughable on its face that this is a plausible threat, and the fact that Facebook totally ignored the "demands" when it suited them indicates empirically that there was no such implied threat they felt pressured by
indeed, Facebook, with knowledge of US partisanship, and a hand in increasing it, was best suited to dismiss such a bipartisan conspiracy theory aimed at silencing such speech a Republican Congress would never dream of silencing
Looks like you agree with the judge here from the article.
or how that ties in with the GOP-controlled senate bringing the CEOs before them:
did they do that because the Biden administration ordered them to, as a result of Facebook ignoring one of the requests?
It's a laughably bipartisan conspiracy theory, and thus nobody would actually feel threatened by it.
In fact it actually proves the point, you just also thing the other party infringed on people's rights as well.
the discussion was around whether Facebook felt there was an implied threat there credible enough to act on it out of fear
obviously, they didn't, and wouldn't, because such a threat would have required that Biden control the GOP Congress somehow, which he didn't
can be applied in all cases!
Both political parties threatened to rewrite section 230 on multiple occasions. This would effectively bankrupt most social media companies. The fact that you are unable or unwilling see this as coercion is your blind spot, not everyone else's.
Empirically, Facebook's denials when it suited them suggests they did not feel any such threat. The fact that they sometimes agreed is not an affirmative indication of such a threat, as they could have easily done so on the merits of the requests.
The fact that the proposed action would require Biden to collude with the GOP congress to censor speech the GOP congress supports most heavily and would never censor, combined with the knowledge of reality that such collusion would never happen, suggests that the threat could not exist even theoretically.
So, now's your chance to put forward an alternative case for there being a credible threat, rather than just an angry dude impotently swearing at social media with no actual power to repeal section 230 short of said implausible collusion. After all, Biden political appointee or not, he and I have exactly the same power to convince the GOP to censor the speech in question: None. Are my angry requests to Facebook similarly plausibly "threatening"? Obviously not.
1. Because Facebook didn't comply with every request, they never felt coerced and neither did any other social media company, therefore no social media company was coerced.
2. The Democrats who threatened to repeal or modify 230 and the Republicans who threatened to repeal or modify 230 would never repeal or modify 230 because of party politics, therefore this wasn't a realistic threat and therefore not form of coercion.
Does that sum up your argument?
the dude swearing at Facebook had no power to repeal section 230, no power to control the GOP Senate into doing so, and no plausible path to convincing the GOP to censor the sort of content in question (content the GOP itself supports, content they oppose censoring)
in short: the "threat" you described isn't realistic or plausible, least of all by Facebook, and a claim of coercion requires that the threat be plausible, not imaginary and contrived
You left a bit out here. He is a representative of the government demanding that a private company censor speech supporting policies it opposes and speech about the president's family among other things.
"A February 2021 message in which Flaherty asked Twitter to remove a parody account related to Hunter Biden's daughter said, 'Cannot stress the degree to which this needs to be resolved immediately. Please remove this account immediately.'"
I didn’t know that impersonating a public figure was acceptable according to twitter’s terms of service.
Perhaps there was special consideration that permitted an impersonator to remain on the platform?
he's a random government bureaucrat who didn't appear to have any actual power besides sending angry letters, and who Facebook felt totally comfortable ignoring
the article presented a great example proving me right here: even he admits facebook ignored his impotent wails when it didn't suit them to satisfy him
I said representative of the government. Those can be police officers, FBI agents, or bureaucrats making demands of private companies.
what is this referring to?
Try demanding that a lady give you her purse and see how far that takes you.
Attempting a crime is often a crime regardless if you succeed.
It seems like an idea people got from Harry Potter refusing to say Voldemort.
Honestly I think it's a reddit meme from Harry Potter fans.
the one originating from the dude who used a swear word?
or the one originating from the company who felt comfortable ignoring the dude and the request?
Jan 6 would like a word. (There's every indication Trump was internally pressuring as President, too, not just via rallies as candidate. https://apnews.com/article/060ca2399a744b4a9554dbd2ec276a90)
> Who did TFG send his demands to?
TFG definitely sent in the same sort of requests. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-tru...
> When the White House called up Twitter in the early morning hours of September 9, 2019, officials had what they believed was a serious issue to report: Famous model Chrissy Teigen had just called President Donald Trump “a pussy ass bitch” on Twitter — and the White House wanted the tweet to come down.
> That exchange — revealed during Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on Twitter by Rep. Gerry Connolly — and others like it are nowhere to be found in Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” releases, which have focused almost exclusively on requests from Democrats and the feds to the social media company.
> “It was strange to me when all of these investigations were announced because it was all about the exact same stuff that we had done [when Donald Trump was in office],” one former top aide to a senior Trump administration official tells Rolling Stone. “It was normal.”
I think I would drive to the airport, go through security, and fly to DC just to throw a drink in that dumbass’s face and laugh.
This country is officially over.
You don't need to imagine. This happened.
> Left media would scream words like bullying.
That you don't know this happened says everything.
> This gives complete justification and vindication of how the trump admin behaved! Untouchable.
No.
> This country is officially over.
Incorrect, again.
This country’s reputation is built upon the idea of collaboration and compromise. Both administrations behaving with such obtuseness means this is a new chapter.
The Trump administration is being prosecuted over entirely different acts.
The fact that the Biden admin behaved the same way vindicates them from accusations that Trump admin behaved unjustly or they should be disciplined for such inappropriateness.