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Texas Opens Investigation into Conspiracy to Boycott Certain Social Platforms

texasattorneygeneral.gov

21–30 of 48 posts

Re: Texas Opens Investigation into Conspiracy to Boycott Certain Social Platforms

#21

This is a pretty scary threat to free speech. There also appears to be a blatant conflict of interest here, considering the owner of the "certain social platform" in question hasn't left the side of the president-elect in weeks and the Attorney General of Texas is directly aligned with the same two oligarchs - Musk and Trump. How is this anything other than using the power of the Texas State Government to run an exto…

That should be allowed.

Re: Texas Opens Investigation into Conspiracy to Boycott Certain Social Platforms

#22
post #8

FTFA: > Attorney General Paxton is investigating a possible coordinated plan or conspiracy to withhold advertising dollars from certain social media platforms by pressuring advertisers not to purchase online advertising space. Although companies are free to choose when and where they want to advertise, a conspiracy among companies along these lines can result in harm to competition and may violate the Texas Free Ente…

I think MLKJ and other participants in the Montgomery bus boycott were indicted on similar offenses.

MLKJ wasn't forcing companies to not buy ad space on the buses, as I understand it.

Boycotts by people are fine. Market manipulation by criminal conspiracy is not.

Re: Texas Opens Investigation into Conspiracy to Boycott Certain Social Platforms

#23
For those that are out of the loop on all this, here's a Reuters article about the formation of the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) from 2019: https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/advertisers-agenc...

And here's the WFA's post about it shutting GARM down: https://wfanet.org/knowledge/item/2024/08/09/wfa-discontinue...

From what I can tell, the World Federation of Advertisers formed GARM to push advertising platforms to take a more proactive role in dealing with misinformation. Naturally, with the way X has been going since the change in ownership, they have been hit hard by this kind of pushback and Elon Musk vowed to sue WFA for this. Seems like because he got involved, the rest of the republican leadership decided to as well as there's this Texas thing and a motion by the House republicans to do a similar investigation.

I really don't know what they expect to accomplish with this though. Do they think the government should force advertisers to buy ads on X or something?

Re: Texas Opens Investigation into Conspiracy to Boycott Certain Social Platforms

#25

This is a pretty scary threat to free speech. There also appears to be a blatant conflict of interest here, considering the owner of the "certain social platform" in question hasn't left the side of the president-elect in weeks and the Attorney General of Texas is directly aligned with the same two oligarchs - Musk and Trump. How is this anything other than using the power of the Texas State Government to run an exto…

[flagged]

Re: Texas Opens Investigation into Conspiracy to Boycott Certain Social Platforms

#27
post #4

Is this a weird Texas thing? Like how they sued Oprah for saying she wouldn't eat beef?

> AG Ken Paxton files 100th lawsuit against Biden administration https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/2024/11/12/ag-ken-p... Yeah, it's theater and not to be taken seriously.

*taxpayer funded theater

Re: Texas Opens Investigation into Conspiracy to Boycott Certain Social Platforms

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think MLKJ and other participants in the Montgomery bus boycott were indicted on similar offenses.

MLKJ wasn't forcing companies to not buy ad space on the buses, as I understand it. Boycotts by people are fine. Market manipulation by criminal conspiracy is not.

The lawsuit against MLKJ was because he boycotted business.

Re: Texas Opens Investigation into Conspiracy to Boycott Certain Social Platforms

#29

This is a pretty scary threat to free speech. There also appears to be a blatant conflict of interest here, considering the owner of the "certain social platform" in question hasn't left the side of the president-elect in weeks and the Attorney General of Texas is directly aligned with the same two oligarchs - Musk and Trump. How is this anything other than using the power of the Texas State Government to run an exto…

[flagged]

Citation needed on the binding rules claims.

Re: Texas Opens Investigation into Conspiracy to Boycott Certain Social Platforms

#30

Perhaps we should start giving investigations like this performing arts awards. The theater deserves recognition.

For a moment I misread your post as suggesting that politicians would abuse government power to attack performing-arts awards in the same way.

Given how a certain politician has whined about the Emmy awards, that seems sadly/weirdly possible now.

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