In that case, Republican politicians publicly complaining about social media moderation in threatening terms would be far more problematic than the FBI notifying Twitter of tweets that are in violation of their TOS. Yet I don't remember the "Free Speech" proponents doing anything but applauding these types of "informal coercion."
Re:The Twitter Files, Part Six
by mikrotikker on Sunday December 18, 2022 @02:58AM
(#34035817)
That's one of the falsiest equivalencies I ever did see
It's actually not equivalent - we're seeing a lot of accuasations here that the FBI "coerced" Twitter or that the FBI requests were "partisan" - there's actually no evidence in these files for these claims. On the other hand, there's plenty of public evidence that Republican politicians were trying to coerce Twitter to accomplish explicitly partisan aims. Yet here we are.
In our system, law including the Constitution is interpreted by the judiciary. You could as well ask "where is the Miranda warning in the Bill of Rights?"
The actual precedents around "jawboning" are murky and contradictory, but it's well-established that the government can step over line in violating constitutionally protected rights via informal coercion.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/informal-government-coercion-and...