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Comment by thrance | Hacker News Reader

During a press conference yesterday, Hegseth, the secretary of war, received a question on Iran from CNN that he didn't feel the need to answer, and then went on a rant about how he can't wait for Ellison to buy the network and rid it of any opposition to the regime [1]. He literally spelt it out.

Free press in the US is already dead, all media belongs to conservative pedophile oligarchs who use it to manipulate the masses and push their warmongering narratives.

> All those free speech advocates are a bit quiet on this, wonder what happened to them.

There are no principled free speech advocates on the right, only people who have an issue with the media not being completely controlled by their side. Their silence then makes perfect sense: they are getting exactly what they wanted.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/pentagon-chie...

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Yes, they are no longer even pretending to hide, I think that's the thing that really changed. Up to a few years ago there would always be the figleaf. Now, they're just stating openly what they're up to and nobody bats an eye. It's an extreme case of the normalization of deviance. And in a way that is the answer to that age old question: "How could they let it happen?" when contemplating Germany ca. 1936.

Funny how many of the people who only a few years ago weregloating about how private companies can do what they want, and there's no issues with censoring people or spreading propaganda (in clandestine cooperation with the government) are now seeing it blow back in their faces. I mean everybody who isn't stupid knew it was coming, not everybody thought it would come so quickly.

Are you sure that these people were "gloating" about private companies moderating arbitrarily? In the US, this is simply an obvious consequence of the first amendment, as many people have indeed pointed out.

The same people may personally hold wildly different beliefs as to whether this legal situation is desirable or not.

And in European countries, where there is no first amendment preventing the government from interfering with social media moderation policies, the situation is often different, and courts have required social media companies to publish speech which they had intended to moderate; see for example:

https://www.tribunaux-rechtbanken.be/sites/default/files/med...

No it wasn't that they were moderating arbitrarily, it's that they were censoring opinions and discussions that were deemed verboten and the gloatees agreed with shutting it down. They of course changed their tune about it when something did not go their way.

arbitrary, adjective:

2 a: not restrained or limited in the exercise of power : ruling by absolute authority

  b: marked by or resulting from the unrestrained and often tyrannical exercise of power

I know. That's not what they were gloating about.

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