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> What was illegal about the government’s actions in your view? That wasn't what I wrote. In the US, the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution protects the rig
by brightlancer 3y ago
> What was illegal about the government’s actions in your view?
That wasn't what I wrote.
In the US, the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution protects the right of the people to speech etc.; the government is generally and overwhelmingly prohibited from censoring people.
Instead, we have the US government contacting _private_ (i.e. not government) companies and wink wink nudge nudge having the private companies censor people, _which would be illegal for the government to do directly_.
- theptip 3y agoI see what you mean now, thanks. Strongly agree with the general point around delegation to private companies (eg on surveillance). Personally I think you can make a case for justifying some curtailment of speech during an emergency (specifically sharing outright false or extremely misleading claims, say “young people are immune to Covid”) but again, agreed it should be done through a framework that is legislated and that the courts can challenge/check rather than unofficial channels. I do think there is some grey area though - if the government is also providing coordination (eg CDC) then it’s not crazy to have a direct channel to the major news/social publishers to coordinate messaging in an emergency. And when they are just providing coordination it’s not necessarily censorship (since the companies would be free to do otherwise). Vs if they are buying license plate data for example, they are clearly actually indirectly doing the thing that they’re forbidden from doing directly.