Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by freedomben | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

freedomben

The administration put pressure on tech companies to make them censor people for "disinformation". For example:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/mark-zuckerbe...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers...

View on HN

Remind me who was president in 2020..

Fair, that one wasn't a good example for this.

Though IMHO it's not just a Biden problem, it's a "everybody in power" problem. They just can't seem to resist (ab)using their power to shape the conversation and censor their opponents. It's also not new, it's been happening for hundreds of years at least. But it did get a lot more brazen under Biden IMHO with Twitter/Facebook etc and admin officials telling private companies what to censor (err, "moderate").

Damn it's really an infringement on our rights that they cracked down on people yelling "fire" in a crowded theater

This is your regularly mandated PSA that the quote about "yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater" comes from Schenck v US, which used that analogy to justify why the government could ban people from protesting the draft in WW1. It is not good law anymore, and has been fully superseded since the Brandenburg v Ohio case which limited the exemption to "imminent lawless action."

Oh well when you put it that way, I guess it's good that kids are dying of measles again.

Read the links. It wasn't just that. People from the administration were actively talking with social media companies and telling them to take stuff down. At some points they even demanded it.

andy do you really think the Hunter Biden laptop story was equivalent or even close to "yelling fire in a crowded theatre"?

They didn't. Fbi told Facebook etc to be on the lookout for Russia pushing stories to influence elections etc, they didn't ask them to do anything specific. Bidens campaign did ask Twitter to remove nudes of his son, which already broke Twitters own rules. This is why the twitterfiles were a nothing burger.

twitters own lawyers argue against this reading in 2023, see page 11 onwards:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.38...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com