Threats of regulations or hefty fines can definitely inconvenience the company’s owners, who have a stake in the company’s future.

And importantly, if the individuals using the platform are (hypothetically) being silenced by government agencies levelling threats against the company unless it complies, this could be seen as tantamount to censorship.

The imagery you and others are trying to invoke is one of burly men in black suits turning up on your doorstep at the family home.

Twitter doesn't have that. The employee handling the request doesn't own Twitter. If something happens to Twitter it doesn't happen to them except in a very abstract way (and the person who did fire them was Elon Musk in the end).

Governments absolutely have a means to intimidate contact owners: it's subpoenaing them to testify before Congress. Not emailing a mid-level content moderation supervisor who has no way to directly talk to the board of executives or shareholders.

You are very naive. Of course the FBI could target an individual at the company to do their bidding if they wanted. Hell, even law enforcement does similar stuff chasing drug dealers. In such cases the govt has no regard for the individuals safety or financial well being.

At the corporate level its also threatening because of the actions the govt could take against the corporation. Look at all Musks companies now undergoing heavy auditing since he messed with the FBIs twitter.

You have to be naive and only see the happy path and think the govt always has your best interests in mind to think otherwise.

> Look at all Musks companies now undergoing heavy auditing since he messed with the FBIs twitter.

Can you point to examples of this? I hope you’re not referring to things like the earlier investigation of Tesla’s FSD claims when that’s been underway for years and so widely predicted.

You really think an AG or similar can’t have a little brunch with a C level executive resulting in a mandate on operational guidelines in response?

Yes, I absolutely think that. Because how the heck are you going to keep that going as a company wide mandate? Where's the directives that things are now this way? Where's the weirdly timed corporate memorandums?

Corporations are not people: you can't "tell" a corporation to do something, because the people who make it up are a mercurial, constantly varying group. Even if the owners know something, the employees don't: training materials have to be updated, policies modified etc. You can't "imply" a threat to a corporation, because how do you "imply" the threat to all the people who have to actually implement the desired action? How do you replace staff who are not in on "the implication"? You can't: somewhere and somehow you would have to have internal emails, training and onboarding materials.