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A comment on Judge rules White House pressured social networks to “suppress free speech”. Parent comment

Re:Judge rules White House pressured social networks to “sup... by mrangle on Thursday July 06, 2023 @03:21PM (#36621382)
It has been long established in case law that government requests for censorship are tantamount to coercion and threats.

To wit, it matters not if the Giant makes a polite or directly threatening request of Jack. In either case, Jack is right to assume that he has no choice in the matter. And can not be expected to tell the Giant to "pound sand". Conversely, the Giant should not be able to claim that Jack had a choice.

The government has no business asking any entity, which it does not fund, to remove speech in the United States.

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Re:Judge rules White House pressured social networks to “sup... by judge2020 on Thursday July 06, 2023 @03:38PM (#36621639)
I'd argue that the US doesn't have enough of a reputation for disappearing people or putting their business under a heat lamp if they don't willfully comply with police requests that are overbearing. Apple, Google, etc get away with denying a lot of data requests[0]. And despite being put on the stand for 2016 election interference, Jack, Elon, and Mark are doing just fine.

0: https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/us.html

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Re:Judge rules White House pressured social networks to “sup... by mrangle on Thursday July 06, 2023 @04:15PM (#36622163)
Reputation isn't an argument. It would be false in its assumption even if it were.

The case law is established.

There isn't a single case of someone's speech being censored, due to government request, for which the person being censored does not have a Constitutionally airtight First Amendment violation complaint.

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Re:Judge rules White House pressured social networks to “sup... by TechBro8615 on Thursday July 06, 2023 @06:37PM (#36624212)
Is that why President Biden called for a federal investigation [0] into Musk's companies shortly after he bought Twitter and told the government censors to "pound sand?"

Keep in mind this was in response to a question from a Bloomberg "journalist" which basically laid out the premise that Musk might be a national security threat. Biden has been known to show up to press conferences with a "cheat sheet" listing which journalists to call for questions, and the verbatim text of the question that each will ask. [1]

[0] https://nypost.com/2022/11/09/biden-calls-for-federal-invest...

[1] https://www.allsides.com/news/2023-04-27-0330/politics-biden...

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Re:Judge rules White House pressured social networks to “sup... by hyperpape on Thursday July 06, 2023 @05:03PM (#36623003)
It would be useful to cite the case law here so that everyone reading along could look it up.
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