Biden administration can resume contact with social-media platforms ‘until further orders’

And Part 3 LOL. Anyone still thinking this is OK?

New Facebook Files reveal lengths WH was willing to go to try to control COVID narrative on social media

According to internal company communications viewed by Fox Business, the White House asked Facebook if they could provide government agencies with special access to tools to target users.

"Since it’s a global pandemic, can we give agencies access to targeting parameters that they normally wouldn’t be able to?" President Biden’s digital director Rob Flaherty asked.

 

Right off the top of my head, 98% of THFSG?

 

You assume too much.

 

It was really pretty recently.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signs law to put Disney district under state control

 

I'm with ya on gov making problems worse, but note the irony of you exercising your right to free speech (including criticism of gov) on a message board. Consider also the perspective of certain marginalized people, whose freedom of speech, right to vote, etc. have been squelched. Ya ain't got it that bad.

 

Both are bad, but suppressing the Public is way worse which is what the Biden Admin did.

 

It seems to me that the only way we could differentiate these two acts is by arguing that corporate speech is fundamentally distinct from individual speech. However, I am not sure such a distinction is defensible, as corporations are collections of people. I think we need to appreciate both the seem and unseen aspects of these cases. The Disney CEO made an astute point in his first words about the matter when he said that Disney could afford this fight, but most other companies cannot. DeSantis’ move, as well as his barring of public contracts with “woke” companies, maybe silenced Disney, but it also quite likely caused a much more broad chilling of speech. If I had owned a smaller compay, there’s no way I wouldn’t be watching what I said at this point. In a very real way, DeSantis’ actions should also be seen as silencing the public.

Note: For this comparison, I am considering the hypothetical of Biden explicitly threatening platforms regarding what viewpoints are allowed to remain. I don’t think we have solid evidence of this action at this time, but I would consider it absolutely intolerable if we did obtain it.

 

We do have solid evidence of this happening to people. That's the issue.

 

Well if that’s the case in your view, perhaps I should amend my statement to read: we don’t have evidence capable of generating a broad consensus that this wrongdoing clearly occurred.

 

Go read the twitter files that were released and it shows Biden's WH actively trying to shut down peoples speech and let me know if this isn't hard evidence.

 

Couple of notes:

First, whether an action is effective is not relevant to whether it is just. And as I argued above, this analysis misses the potential unseen effects of countless other companies staying silent to avoid Disney’s fate.

Second, it’s also irrelevant that their benefits were “special”. Imagine Biden giving special tax breaks to all media companies unless they spoke against any of his policies. Clearly this couldn’t be ok because the breaks were not available to other companies.

This is essentially the most cut and dried example of a 1a violation that I can imagine. I certainly understand you being uncomfortable with Biden talking to twitter, but there’s no way you should simultaneously be ok with what DeSantis did.

 

Sorry, desantis is a babe in the woods neophyte compared to the BA...and in other news, desantis will ultimately be held accountable for his dirty deeds.

 

The Biden campaign requested to take down Hunter dick pics while the Trump White House requested to take down posts that hurt his feelings.

 

I think you are interpreting me backwards. I am certainly not trying to argue that if DeSantis performs an action that it becomes ethically acceptable. I hold free expression in extremely high regard, and I abhor virtually all government infringements of speech. This includes DeSantis’ actions and the actions you are ascribing to Biden.

I also don’t think that your way of parsing the two actions, how public they are, does the job for which you are employing it. When government wants to make an example to control the behaviors of the populace, the punishment must be public, and the more public the better. Secretly punishing Disney could only influence Disney and could have no chilling effect on the potential future speech of other entities.

Where our disagreement lies is not in how seriously you are taking Biden’s potential actions (though I don’t seem as convinced by the evidence they actually happened yet), but in how you are not applying the same standard to DeSantis’ actions (which are very well evidenced). Making public benefits contingent on taking a friendly position to the current office holder is simply never going to be acceptable to me, regardless of the identity of the office holder.

 

We seem to be going in a bit of a circle. I think I understood your point about secrecy, which is why I explained that DeSantis making Disney’s punishment very public is exactly what makes it an effective deterrent to other entities:

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Meanwhile, if I wanted to influence public opinion by contracting the sphere of acceptable speech, I would want to do this privately, or else risk a Streisand effect where the silenced opinions get more publicity than if I just left them alone.

In my view, these are both the ideal ways to achieve the desired ends of the two different approaches.