No, it was not. It’s particularly silly to suggest this when we have live example of such orders right now.
The companies were nudged. (And they were wrong to respond to public pressure.) The President, after all, has a “bully pulpit.” But there were no orders, no credibly threats and plenty of companies didn’t deplatform these folks.
I’m not disputing that they coördinated. I’m challenging that they were coerced.
We wouldn’t describe Fox News altering a script on account of a friendly call from Miller and friends the “government ordering private companies” around. (Or, say, Florida opening their criminal justice records to ICE the federal government ordering states around.) Twitter’s leadership and the Biden administration saw eye to eye. This is a story about a media monoculture and private censorship, not government censorship.
https://apnews.com/article/meta-platforms-mark-zuckerberg-bi...
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3kDr0LcmqOHOz3mBHMdDuV?si=j...
It was not. No threats were made, and Twitter didn’t blindly follow the FBI’s guidance.
The simple truth is the leftist elements that wanted to control the debate were there in the White House and in Twitter’s San Francisco offices. Nobody had to be coerced, they were coördinating.
What was the implication? Twitter had no business in front of the federal government. They were wilfully complying.
That doesn't make it okay. But it's a total retconning of actual history to suggest this was government censorship in any form.
So... what sort of threat was this, that suddenly disappeared when Musk bought it? How credible was the threat if Musk was able to release the Twitter Files without repercussions from the Biden admin?
And the implication of repercussions were for employees that were in charge of removing content. Not for the head honchos.