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Comment by electrondood | Hacker News Reader

Wasn't the entire point of the Matt Taibbi "Twitter files" attempt at a news story to expose exactly this, except slanted to make it look like a big liberal conspiracy rather than the good faith operation of a social media platform?

Musk made big loud statements about free speech, etc. and then ended up arriving back at the status quo. Turns out there never was a problem to begin with, and you actually need the TOS (you know, the reason Babylon Bee, Jordan Peterson, and Trump were correctly banned) because a toxic platform drives away users and advertisers.

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the lawsuit, as perceived from x's viewpoint, is forcing the company to have regulations on "hatespeech". which from x's viewpoint then becomes a government control mechanism for censorship

> slanted to make it look like a big liberal conspiracy rather than the good faith operation of a social media platform

good faith is when one can steelman the other point of view.

those files revealed the government was stepping over lines to use censorious mechanisms through the private sector, the conspiracy seems to be on the other side of the aisle. and the lawsuit is over the same principles.

>the lawsuit, as perceived from x's viewpoint, is forcing the company to have regulations on "hatespeech"

But it doesn't. This law only requires that a company's moderation policies be public. The company already has these policies internally, regardless of whether they follow them, and there is no room nor justification in the law for punishing someone for "not following" said policies, nor is such a concept even defined.

This law has nothing to do with "punishing" Twitter, as it literally cannot, and more to do with making Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Bytedance be transparent about what content they disallow on their platform.

You know the once a month post here about "Google killed my email account of 10 years for no reason and I can't contact anyone to ask wtf or get it fixed"? This law is the first step in combating THAT

Yeah, I'm confused here as well. It seems like this is exactly what Elon wanted from Twitter, prior to him purchasing it.

You're no more confused than Musk himself. The descent into internet crankery is really distressing. Building companies to manufacture cars and rockets are objective problems with objective solutions, and he does well there. Engaging in a crusade to expose the "Woke Mind Virus" or whatever just leads to irrational nonsense like this.

Seems pretty simple to me. He likes airing other people’s dirty laundry, not his own.

The US Federal government, Justice Department, and FBI were involved in censorship campaigns targeting specific individuals. You’re omitting this part.

They still are. Why do you think that has changed? Musk has complied with more demands from government since taking over than the previous leadership did.

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/5/2/twitter-fulfillin...

The US Federal government, Justice Department, and FBI are currently involved in every substantial American business. Did Matt think he was scooping Snowden 9 years after the fact?

To be precise, 3 Republican appointed Federalist Society judges ruled the Biden administration "likely violated" the First Amendment. The judiciary has been politicized to the point that we can't pretend these people are nonpartisan anymore. They're politicians in robes with a political agenda.

And if they had voted the other way would you be cheering that they’d voted the right way? By what metric are you judging the ruling other than whether it agrees with your political ideas going in?

Maybe they are politicians in robes. But what does a non politicized judicairy look like to you beyond voting your way?

How do you know I'm not cheering about the way they decided? I'm very happy to keep the government from violating the first amendment. But let's not pretend there aren't billionaires paying for exactly these decisions to come down. If we are going to trust the process, the process can't be corrupted like this.

Genuine question: how was the process corrupted?

In this case every member of the panel is a contributor to the Federalist Society, which is knee deep in dark money with the explicit political goal of reshaping the judiciary in its image. I'm fine with right-leaning decisions, but these judges just should not be involved in something so explicitly political. It taints everything they do.

And? Most criminal investigations "target" a specific individual. That's actually a required part of a warrant in most cases.

Or are you against private companies being required to comply with court orders?

Is this criminal? No. Is there a predication for an investigation? No.

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