Interesting point!

The white house in this case was the Trump white house so it could have been received positively by the media that twitter is standing up to Trump by suing.

Could you elaborate on why you dont think it would be a free speech violation? Is internet communication not considered speech?

Internet communication is considered speech. But, the speech on Twitter's website belongs to Twitter. They get to decide what is on their website. They can, as far as the First Amendment goes, more or less ban or censor anything they want for any reason, because they are a private actor.

If Twitter decided to remove Hunter Biden content completely on their own, that would be legal. If Twitter decided to remove that content because someone asked nicely- regardless of who that person is, whether they are President or not- that would be legal. It's only a legal issue if the government forces Twitter to remove the content, which is not something Twitter has asserted.

In which case? The tweet says it was both White houses with obvious favoritism towardd Democrats.

The ACLU disagrees.

https://twitter.com/aclu/status/1587198479608303622

The government pressuring private companies to censor is a First Amendment violation.

Pressure would be a First Amendment violation. Twitter has not asserted they were pressured. If they feel they were, they should say so, and sue.

What if Twitter agreed with the motivation for the pressure? Shouldn’t the government not be pressuring people in pursuit of limiting free speech whether the current recipients of the pressure happen to be of the same political persuasion or not?

Otherwise what happens when the party in power changes?

"What if Twitter agreed with the motivation for the pressure?" Then it's not pressure. It's Twitter doing something they want to do. Just because the government and Twitter agree on something doesn't mean the government "forced them" to do it, which is what the 1A and prior restraint law care about.

"What happens when the party in power changes?" Twitter, like every other company, gets to decide whether or not they want to support or oppose the party in power, and if Twitter feels the government is violating their 1A rights, Twitter can sue them

> Twitter has not asserted they were pressured. If they feel they were, they should say so, and sue.'

You do understand that they can collude? It's funny we have spent countless hours hearing about Trump Russia collusion. Now suddenly people can't seem to figure out there is a thing called collusion.

Censorship of this story doesn't exist in vaccum. There is a legitimate argument why this shouldn't be investigated as election interference when we've spent countless hours based on Steele dossier, which turned out to be a political ploy.

For collusion to be noteworthy there still has to be a crime committed. The allegation in the Trump-Russia collusion case is that they conspired to have foreign operators influence the election. This would have been an illegal act that they colluded on.

There is nothing illegal about requesting review of tweets even through special channels. If Twitter actually has evidence of an illegal act to coerce the review then they should probably rehire whoever was coerced and file suit.

Collusion with a foreign adversary regarding illegally obtained internal comms from your political opponent: NBD

Collusion with a domestically owned bird app re revenge porn of your crackhead son: Worst scandal in US history

Got it.

Collusion as you're using it would not be a 1A violation. It also would not qualify as election interference any more than any other newspaper choosing what stories to run or what candidates to endorse (legally speaking).

"Your honor, I have not proof that I was actually pressured in any way but I felt that way."

They haven't even claimed they were!

As stated in tweet #11, Twitter is overwhemingly staffed by people of one political orientation, and the company as a whole would thus have no issue with helping their political party win the election. They had no reason to sue.

And that is completely legal and allowed under the First Amendment.

> Twitter is overwhemingly staffed by people of one political orientation

Where is this information coming from?

This chart says nothing about staffing, and the comment itself is unsourced.

I'm going to assume that you are confused by the linked chart and are not being intentionally obtuse.

The chart displays a breakdown of total employee contributions to the two political parties. As you can see, the "% to democrats" column contains 95%+ for the last 4 years. It would be safe to assume that this metric is a reasonable proxy for Twitter staff's political leanings.

Just to be safe I recommend you review the suite guidelines, specifically about assuming good faith when replying to comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Fair enough that I misread the chart, but are we sure that those contributions are evenly distributed throughout the employee population and not, for example, mostly from executives? I can't tell where this data is sourced from.

>It would be safe to assume that this metric is a reasonable proxy for Twitter staff's political leanings.

No it wouldn't be because it doesn't way what percent of employees donate at all. I assume the percentage is pretty low because it's <$200,000 going to Democrats from the entire company.

Ignoring that we have no idea where the data ultimately comes from (or are private contributions public in the US?) it is highly misleading by omission. If we look at the linked page [1] we see that 2014 and 2016 much higher fractions went to the Republicans (31% in 2016 and 11% in 2014) with the total contributions varying wildly from year to year, but the chart was cut to show single-digit values only.

[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/twitter/totals?id=D00006711...

As part of the donating to a political campaign, that information is required to ensure it is a real person donating, prevent employees from prohibited companies from donating (e.g. federal contractors have a conflict of interest) and preventing or recording coercion from management to donate a particular way.

Consider https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dscc-ads-ga - go through the pay with card and stop before you actual enter in any details.

The page will look like https://imgur.com/sNJFkjS

https://www.quora.com/U-S-Presidential-Campaign-Donations-wh...

https://www.fec.gov/help-candidates-and-committees/keeping-r...

> For each contribution that exceeds $200, either by itself or when added to the contributor’s previous contributions made during the same calendar year, records must identify that contribution by:

Amount; Date of receipt; and Contributor’s full name and mailing address, occupation and employer. If a person has already contributed an aggregate amount of over $200 during a calendar year, each subsequent contribution, regardless of amount, must be identified in the same way.

Please note that contributions to authorized committees are aggregated on a calendar-year basis for recordkeeping purposes, but are aggregated on a per-election basis for purposes of monitoring contribution limits, and on an election-cycle basis for reporting purposes.

---

And thus open secrets is getting the aggregate data that and releasing that.

Fun fact : you can just put unemployed and you don't have to list your employer. Most tech people I know are so paranoid about personal information that they would most likely go that route.

Fun Fact: Lying on a Federally required election financial disclosure document is breaking the law and asking for trouble.

Please don't post this type of advice here or elsewhere. Don't think that if you are paying with a credit card in your name, that your employer information can't be easily determined if there is an FEC investigation of a candidate receiving a large number of contributions from "unemployed" people. You are telling people not only to break the law, but to do so in a very public way that is impossible for them to hide.

Always tell the truth in all legally required financial disclosures, especially when this is touching campaign financing.

Are you actually shocked that intelligent people are more progressive?

See Fox News…

What does fox news have to do with this?

A media company favoring a political party is not illegal. It’s indeed quite normal. That said, removing revenge porn isn’t favoring a political party.

Fox does not "favor" the GOP. It is an instrument of the GOP.

True. Same difference.