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> The Bill of Rights — the other name for the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution – like the Constitution itself and all the other amendments, sets lim

> The Bill of Rights — the other name for the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution – like the Constitution itself and all the other amendments, sets limits only on the relationship between the U.S. government and its people. > If the government is not involved, the First Amendment does not apply. The interesting point where this intersects Twitter is from before Musk took over. The Twitter Files clearly demonstrated that government agencies, from the FBI to the DHS and more, were in intimate contact with internal Twitter moderators and frequently made demands to Censor (wording!) Americans by banning or deranking their posts. Often despite significant protest by Twitter staff! Hell, there was an internal welcome group and onboarding packet for 'former' FBI agents that were hired on to Twitter, sometimes the same people that used to be on the government side of email chains. The government can't just hide its Censorship behind supposedly independent actions of a private company. If it's government action in disguise the First Amendment still applies. Musk's anomalous takeover suddenly and unexpectedly exposed rampant government-directed Censorship happening inside Twitter. There's no such thing as one cockroach. If you see one, there are a hundred hiding that you can't see. The scary part is that the same thing is almost certainly happening across the tech industry.

octonion 3y ago
The only things I saw were occasional perfectly reasonable requests, not demands, in areas such as disinformation and invasions of privacy. Furthermore, the internal files were never released as far as I know, but were only given to certain political extremists and then cherry-picked. Am I incorrect? This is why nothing ever came of any of it.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
The other way that the government tries to do skirt the First Amendment is by having hearings where the Congresspeople/Senators publicly berate and threaten the CEOs of social media companies over content that is protected under the First Amendment
- hellojesus 3y ago
  The CEOs need to simply inform Congress of 1A. For the life of me, I have no idea why a congressional hearing is threatening to them.
  - infogulch 3y ago
    You're sitting in the United States Capitol Building for hours, being grilled by the representatives from the most powerful country on earth, by people who could decide on a whim to make your job as CEO a living hell by passing laws that unfavorably regulate your industry... And you're saying you could just shrug that off? Excuse my incredulity.
    - hellojesus 3y ago
      Yes. I fully believe that I would shrug it off in a similar position. What the CEOs fail to realize is that it is their chance to expose the congressional members as unfit for duty. It's their chance to ruin their reelection efforts. It's their chance to hold the government accountable.
test098 3y ago
> The Twitter Files clearly demonstrated that government agencies, from the FBI to the DHS and more, were in intimate contact with internal Twitter moderators and frequently made demands to Censor (wording!) Americans by banning or deranking their posts. the twitter files showed that twitter does this no more than any other social media company for natsec reasons, and the US gov't never (let alone "frequently") made demands to censor anyone.
wturner 3y ago
I remember Noam Chomsky being critical decades ago of the major news channels and saying that due to the nature of commercial TV, speech is restricted to soundbites making authentic analysis and criticism inherently difficult for the left. The response by most right wingers was "Those are private companies they can do what they want". When social media companies put the clamp down on some of these violence peddling wing nuts like Alex Jones, all the right wingers said their freedom of speech was "violated". All the previous talk saying "They're public companies they can do what they want" went right out the window on the right. Elon Musk is a walking one man government contract. Him buying Twitter should demonstrate that free market ideology is a farce and always has been. The intertwine of Government and big business should become more crystalized when a billionaire buys "the public square". Instead, the opposite has happened and right wingers and libertarians double down on their ideology while hyping up a phony sensationalist narrative that Elon is really exposing corruption! How many right wingers or libertarians are advocating for systemic change to get money out of politics? Is Elon? No - because he believes money is free speech, he has the most money so he has the most free speech. Until that is addressed, then the rest of this talk is fluff.
raincom 3y ago
Government 'subverts' the fourth amendment using the third-party doctrine. Now, extend that logic to every amendment. Use private companies to curtail the first amendment.
breadbreadbread 3y ago
I think you conveniently stopped reading before point 3. > The government does, in fact, have the power to regulate some speech. When the rights and liberties of others are in serious jeopardy, speakers who provoke others into violence, wrongfully and recklessly injure reputations or incite others to engage in illegal activity may be silenced or punished. The twitter files only showed that the government lobbied for changes, and that Twitter agreed to some changes. There is also evidence in those files that Twitter also refused some requests. we can hem and haw about the validity of the requests all day but I want to ask this: If you were a big enough media site that you become a potential public safety/national security risk (something like 90+M American users), what do you propose you should do when the government takes notice and starts contacting you? Do you think Twitter should have just ignored all emails from the government about public safety threats? Do you think they should have had a policy of just throwing government correspondence in the big ole customer service heap and handled national security and public safety issues in 10-12 business days? when government agencies contact you about potential threats/issues would you take them seriously or laugh in their face? Did these government actors threaten Twitter with legal action or just request action be taken about certain content? I don't want to be in the position of defending the FBI or a big corporation here, but I think if you have concerns about the conduct of Twitter or government here, the 1st amendment can't be your legal foundation here. You need to 1) contact your representatives about reducing FBI/DHS overreach and potentially restructure their responsibilities and funding. If you have an issue with the FBI we can do something about it together other than yelling about liberal bias at Twitter 2) actually have meaningful conversations about how you think social media should handle things like misinformation, extremism, and hatespeech. Because 0 moderation is not the answer and will never create healthy communities. And 3) think critically about what avenues government can and should use to make requests when it comes to issues of public health. Government is always going to want to keep tabs on what goes on in public forums and have concerns and it's the platforms decision as to whether or not to heed advice. I agree that we should be concerned about any legal threats are attached to requests, but I dont think you'll ever stop government from contacting major platforms that have a major affect on their constituents altogether.

octonion 3y ago

The only things I saw were occasional perfectly reasonable requests, not demands, in areas such as disinformation and invasions of privacy. Furthermore, the internal files were never released as far as I know, but were only given to certain political extremists and then cherry-picked. Am I incorrect? This is why nothing ever came of any of it.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago

The other way that the government tries to do skirt the First Amendment is by having hearings where the Congresspeople/Senators publicly berate and threaten the CEOs of social media companies over content that is protected under the First Amendment

hellojesus 3y ago
The CEOs need to simply inform Congress of 1A. For the life of me, I have no idea why a congressional hearing is threatening to them.
- infogulch 3y ago
  You're sitting in the United States Capitol Building for hours, being grilled by the representatives from the most powerful country on earth, by people who could decide on a whim to make your job as CEO a living hell by passing laws that unfavorably regulate your industry... And you're saying you could just shrug that off? Excuse my incredulity.
  - hellojesus 3y ago
    Yes. I fully believe that I would shrug it off in a similar position. What the CEOs fail to realize is that it is their chance to expose the congressional members as unfit for duty. It's their chance to ruin their reelection efforts. It's their chance to hold the government accountable.

test098 3y ago

> The Twitter Files clearly demonstrated that government agencies, from the FBI to the DHS and more, were in intimate contact with internal Twitter moderators and frequently made demands to Censor (wording!) Americans by banning or deranking their posts. the twitter files showed that twitter does this no more than any other social media company for natsec reasons, and the US gov't never (let alone "frequently") made demands to censor anyone.

wturner 3y ago

I remember Noam Chomsky being critical decades ago of the major news channels and saying that due to the nature of commercial TV, speech is restricted to soundbites making authentic analysis and criticism inherently difficult for the left. The response by most right wingers was "Those are private companies they can do what they want". When social media companies put the clamp down on some of these violence peddling wing nuts like Alex Jones, all the right wingers said their freedom of speech was "violated". All the previous talk saying "They're public companies they can do what they want" went right out the window on the right. Elon Musk is a walking one man government contract. Him buying Twitter should demonstrate that free market ideology is a farce and always has been. The intertwine of Government and big business should become more crystalized when a billionaire buys "the public square". Instead, the opposite has happened and right wingers and libertarians double down on their ideology while hyping up a phony sensationalist narrative that Elon is really exposing corruption! How many right wingers or libertarians are advocating for systemic change to get money out of politics? Is Elon? No - because he believes money is free speech, he has the most money so he has the most free speech. Until that is addressed, then the rest of this talk is fluff.

raincom 3y ago

Government 'subverts' the fourth amendment using the third-party doctrine. Now, extend that logic to every amendment. Use private companies to curtail the first amendment.

breadbreadbread 3y ago

I think you conveniently stopped reading before point 3. > The government does, in fact, have the power to regulate some speech. When the rights and liberties of others are in serious jeopardy, speakers who provoke others into violence, wrongfully and recklessly injure reputations or incite others to engage in illegal activity may be silenced or punished. The twitter files only showed that the government lobbied for changes, and that Twitter agreed to some changes. There is also evidence in those files that Twitter also refused some requests. we can hem and haw about the validity of the requests all day but I want to ask this: If you were a big enough media site that you become a potential public safety/national security risk (something like 90+M American users), what do you propose you should do when the government takes notice and starts contacting you? Do you think Twitter should have just ignored all emails from the government about public safety threats? Do you think they should have had a policy of just throwing government correspondence in the big ole customer service heap and handled national security and public safety issues in 10-12 business days? when government agencies contact you about potential threats/issues would you take them seriously or laugh in their face? Did these government actors threaten Twitter with legal action or just request action be taken about certain content? I don't want to be in the position of defending the FBI or a big corporation here, but I think if you have concerns about the conduct of Twitter or government here, the 1st amendment can't be your legal foundation here. You need to 1) contact your representatives about reducing FBI/DHS overreach and potentially restructure their responsibilities and funding. If you have an issue with the FBI we can do something about it together other than yelling about liberal bias at Twitter 2) actually have meaningful conversations about how you think social media should handle things like misinformation, extremism, and hatespeech. Because 0 moderation is not the answer and will never create healthy communities. And 3) think critically about what avenues government can and should use to make requests when it comes to issues of public health. Government is always going to want to keep tabs on what goes on in public forums and have concerns and it's the platforms decision as to whether or not to heed advice. I agree that we should be concerned about any legal threats are attached to requests, but I dont think you'll ever stop government from contacting major platforms that have a major affect on their constituents altogether.