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Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

arstechnica.com

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Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#371

Post by Zetice »

causi wrote: post #358
Zetice wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coercion requires a stick, I see no stick here. The judge literally cited Biden saying, "they're killing people" as coercion, which is a bald-faced lie.

Do implied threats count as coercion? Does a threatening tone? Does someone in a position of power making demands they don't actually have the power to enforce count as coercion? I don't know. The judge seems to think they do.

What implied threats, what threatening tone? What position of power?

If you read the examples cited, nothing even remotely comes close to a layperson interpretation of coercion, and I believe the legal definition is more rigorous, not less.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#372

Post by Brusco_RF »

brasic wrote: post #167
efitz wrote: post #131

This thread baffles me. There are a lot of replies that either didn’t read the article (or even the headline) that seem to be government apologists, or arguing that a particular email isn’t coercive enough, etc. A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. Freedom of speech…

Read the entire injunction. It’s only seven pages. Then tell me with a straight face that you think it’s a good thing for free speech. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18... It amounts to “no one from these 8 government agencies may communicate with anyone working at these three non profits, 20 social media companies or any similar organization” I’m not defending the behavior alleged here but…

You aren't under the impression that the 1st amendment protects government speech, are you?

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#373

Post by Clubber »

ClarityJones wrote: post #366
codetrotter wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Society as a whole needs to be better at calling out the lies with hard facts and data. It doesn’t work. In the time it takes to refute one lie with facts and data, the world has moved on and uncountable additional lies have been spread in the meantime. Besides which. Both the people that produce the lies, and their supporters, are well aware of the fact that it’s not true. They just choose to ignore that. And any…

> It doesn’t work. In the time it takes to refute one lie with facts and data, the world has moved on and uncountable additional lies have been spread in the meantime. Great point, free speech is bad. We should repeal the 1st Amendment. /s

There's an uncomfortable amount of people on this thread that seem to feel that way.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#374

Post by code_duck »

mcpackieh wrote: post #343
krapp wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you've seen enough threads derail, go unhinged and burst into flames at the mere mention of his name, it makes sense.

If the conversation is about Trump I don't think there's any hiding that, nor any avoiding of flame wars. Honestly I think it's a reddit meme from Harry Potter fans.

More of a Twitter thing from my observations, and nobody is thinking about Harry Potter at all.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#375

Post by lancesells »

stcroixx wrote: post #277
brasic wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the entire injunction. It’s only seven pages. Then tell me with a straight face that you think it’s a good thing for free speech. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18... It amounts to “no one from these 8 government agencies may communicate with anyone working at these three non profits, 20 social media companies or any similar organization” I’m not defending the behavior alleged here but…

Free speech for citizens is important to me and I'm on no political side. This seems like a great thing to me. I don't want the government doing what they're been doing or doing it again in the future, regardless of who that government is. Ideally, these losers would have enough morals to police themselves or not do this in the first place, but here we are. Might not be a perfect ruling, but in spirit it's against go…

I agree for the most part, but the only thing that keeps me wholesale from this is the idea that all social media posts are US citizens.

What if, and I'm not suggesting it is, 100% of the posts in question where from foreign actors looking to disrupt the US? Is the government in no way allowed to step in? Is that even censorship?

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#376

Post by edgyquant »

LexiMax wrote: post #99
edgyquant wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No this doesn’t matter. The president and senate are who pick and approve the judges not the bar association.

This is non-responsive to their point.

Incorrect and regardless your comment is 100% useless

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#377

Post by calgarymicro »

doitLP wrote: post #20

> Doughty said that one Flaherty [White House director of digital strategy] message in February 2021 accused Facebook "of causing 'political violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19 claims." Flaherty also wrote in a July 2021 email to Facebook, "Are you guys fucking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today." Sure sounds like a relationship where the power only goes one direction and th…

Worth noting that this is a something of a misrepresentation of Flaherty's email[0] by the judge. Flaherty said

> All, especially given the Journal's reporting on your internal work on political violence spurred by Facebook groups, I am also curious about the new rules as part of the "overhaul."

Referring to this[1] WSJ article that details explicit calls to violence on FB. He then specifically quotes part of FB's response in his question

> I am seeing that you will no longer promote civic and health related groups, but I am wondering if the reforms here extend further?

So Flaherty was absolutely not accusing Facebook "of causing 'political violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19 claims", he was accusing FB of hosting actual calls to violence.

[0]https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63290154/174/1/missouri...

[1]https://archive.is/6q67O

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#378

Post by dragonwriter »

ignoreCJR wrote: post #361
dragonwriter wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Opinion Pages of the WSJ also tend to lean more conservative, while the news side leans liberal. As with most News Corp outlets, the news side of the WSJ leans pretty far to the right (it did so even before it was a News Corp outlet, though not as much), it only seems “liberal” by comparison with its own opinion section. That said, unlike, say, Fox News, the WSJ news side at least makes an effort to adhere to t…

[flagged]

> So funny, did you miss the columbian journalism review destroying legacy media including the nytimes for partisan reporting?

Ooh, whataboutism.

If we were talking about the NYTimes, I'd have plenty to say about the specific factional bias of that outlet, which, yes, its just as intense as the WSJ’s. If the 1990’s neoliberal consensus (today, pretty much the dominant, though decreasingly so over the last decade, centrist corporate capitalist wing of the Democratic Party) was embodied in a newspaper, it would be the New York Times.

Doesn’t change anything about the WSJ.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#379

Post by HideousKojima »

Brusco_RF wrote: post #372
brasic wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read the entire injunction. It’s only seven pages. Then tell me with a straight face that you think it’s a good thing for free speech. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.lawd.18... It amounts to “no one from these 8 government agencies may communicate with anyone working at these three non profits, 20 social media companies or any similar organization” I’m not defending the behavior alleged here but…

You aren't under the impression that the 1st amendment protects government speech, are you?

I mean I've seen gun grabbers try and argue that the second amendment was meant to guarantee the right of the government to field an army, so it's certainly possible.

Re: Injunction issued in case about social media pressure from US Government

#380

Post by thsksbd »

say_it_as_it_is wrote: post #356

These are private platforms. They can censor whatever speech they want. They decide whether to listen to big bad government with an axe over its head or simply get their head cut off, right? I mean, they could have just chosen to be crushed with legal battles from the government, right? Free speech and free will in America, right?

Its not Big Tech thats getting sued, its the executive branch of the government.

Big Tech did its bro-thing and they're cool - they're getting away with it.

The WH, however, cannot do what they did and they're getting hammered for it.

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