what was the implied threat?
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
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.
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
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
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