> Doughty said that one Flaherty [White House director of digital strategy] message in February 2021 accused Facebook "of causing 'political violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19 claims." Flaherty also wrote in a July 2021 email to Facebook, "Are you guys fucking serious? I want an answer on what happened here and I want it today."
Sure sounds like a relationship where the power only goes one direction and the Flaherty was very comfortable demanding whatever he wanted.
Worth noting that this is a something of a misrepresentation of Flaherty's email[0] by the judge. Flaherty said
> All, especially given the Journal's reporting on your internal work on political violence spurred by Facebook groups, I am also curious about the new rules as part of the "overhaul."
Referring to this[1] WSJ article that details explicit calls to violence on FB. He then specifically quotes part of FB's response in his question
> I am seeing that you will no longer promote civic and health related groups, but I am wondering if the reforms here extend further?
So Flaherty was absolutely not accusing Facebook "of causing 'political violence' by failing to censor false COVID-19 claims", he was accusing FB of hosting actual calls to violence.
But Flaherty specifically didn’t get what he wanted (that’s why he was mad!) so I think it’s misleading to say the power only goes from government to Facebook. If anything this example shows the exact opposite with Flaherty sending indignant anger in the other direction.
Yes but what you don’t see is the many many requests in the same tone that come into social media (and traditional media!) companies from corporations, celebrities, even regular old citizens who are mad their drunk driving arrest got reported (for example).
The idea that an imperious tone somehow proves a power imbalance is hilarious to anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of these requests from regular people. “I demand an answer right now” is what angry diners say when a restaurant runs of the special. It’s the tone that people adopt to imply power when they don’t actually have power, but want to seem like they do. Which is a common, and legal, mode of speaking in everyday life.
The government has power. Craig the office drone asking for "misinformation" to be taken down at behest of his boss does not have the power "The government" does.
Or am I now supposed to believe that if you anger Sheila at the DMV the IRS will audit you?
> The government has power. Craig the office drone asking for "misinformation" to be taken down at behest of his boss does not have the power "The government" does.
Or am I now supposed to believe that if you anger Sheila at the DMV the IRS will audit you?
Craig's boss is the highest executive power in the country. Most of their work is handled by aides and subordinates like Craig, with authority delegated from their office. The boss only directly makes the important decisions. You are being disingenuous by claiming Craig is a innocent, powerless trigger-happy drone. And if you have lived in small towns, expect to receive worse service or discrimination from Sheila in future. The highest power in the country cannot be held to the same standard as a county clerk (and frankly speaking, most DMV employees need more training in customer service and have their compensation tied to overall productivity and performance, lots of fat to be trimmed there, both literal and metaphorical).
I invite you to have a conversation with my six year old child and then reflect upon the difference between power dynamics as they exist and as they are vocalised.
You make a good point. The United States Government is more like a demanding toddler throwing a tantrum than a 6 year old throwing a tantrum. The difference is the 6 year old is potty trained.
You don't see a difference between a toddler being demanding with a parent and the federal government demanding something of a corporation? What kind of Republican's wet dream do you live in where those power dynamics are akin?
Is a demand not still inappropriate even if it's correctly rebuffed? If I ask for someone to violate policy at work and they refuse, I can still expect I might be investigated on the basis of the attempt
I mean, sure, in terms of jurisprudence here the lack of actual tort may indeed mean that there is no legal outcome, but evidence a desire to do something is a pretty good justification for investigating if there were cases where you did do it. And in the court of public opinion, it's very damning. I certainly won't be saying "no harm, no foul"
I don't see why one's judgment of the situation should depend on whether the government was successful in intimidating Facebook. What matters is that they tried.
Do implied threats count as coercion? Does a threatening tone? Does someone in a position of power making demands they don't actually have the power to enforce count as coercion? I don't know. The judge seems to think they do.
What implied threats, what threatening tone? What position of power?
If you read the examples cited, nothing even remotely comes close to a layperson interpretation of coercion, and I believe the legal definition is more rigorous, not less.
Therefore, the question is not what decision the social-media company would have made, but whether the Government “so involved itself in the private party’s conduct” that the decision is essentially that of the Government.
The government asking them to remove specific posts and accounts and demote others is pretty clearly that.
How coercive? If you're right, the government can still make a court case that takes a good part of a decade and costs you ten million dollars to win.
That's just the straightforward stuff. That's without the IRS deciding your corporate profit statements deserve extra scrutiny, and the FCC deciding to question whether you really qualify for section 230, and and and...
You can be right. They can still make your life very difficult if they decide to. And it will be very hard to prove that that's what they're doing. And even if you can, you probably aren't going to get the money back that the court cases cost, and you definitely aren't getting back the time and management attention it cost.
So, not legally coercive. But still kind of coercive, even though legally it has no force.
That would imply the person or group doing the asking somehow have unilateral control over those distinct agencies. At what point down the career ladder do you become just another drone who shouldn't be considered to have power over distinct government agencies? Surely Rachel in the Post office can't have you audited. But maybe the president can talk to enough people to encourage that to happen. So where is the limit?
Well, a "White House director of digital strategy" is presumably not Rachel in the post office. He's someone in the White House, which means he's in a position to have a quiet conversation with the president. "They're not playing ball" might be all it would take.
I mean, yes, you're right, the White House director of digital strategy, taken by himself, can go jump in the lake as far as Facebook or Twitter are concerned. Even given all the people under him, that's still true. The question is, to what degree is he speaking for the people over him? How many layers are there between him and the president? I'd guess somewhere from 0 to 2, though I admit that's a guess. Can he cause trouble on his own? No. But the one giving him orders may be able to give orders to others.
But if the president asks for something, you say no, and he sics the NSA or something onto you, how does this injunction protect you?
Basically this is arguing that the mere existence of government has a chilling effect, which it demonstrably does, but isn't really something you can make go away with an injunction. Hell, what's stopping the Biden admin from enacting this punishment scheme on these people for getting this injunction?
Well, it protects some. It makes the Biden administration somewhat less likely to ask, because there's a public rebuke from the courts, and if they keep doing it anyway, they are likely to lose any further court cases around it. So they have some deterrent - not perfect, but more than zero.
From the company's side, they have some indication that they are likely to be backed by the courts if it comes to that, so they have some more confidence in telling the administration to get lost - not perfect, but more than none. (They're not going to be less willing to say no after this court ruling.)
So, yes, the Biden administration could keep going. But that's unlikely to play well, either in the courts or in the press. The Biden administration is not a dictatorial regime; they face an election in 14 months. That gives them more incentive to "control the narrative", true, but it also gives them incentive to not be visibly seen as bullying the social media.
I was specifically responding to the OP's point that this demonstrates power flowing from government to Facebook. The fact that FB ignored the request and did not suffer consequences demonstrates that power does not in fact flow that way.
You're welcome to judge the appropriateness of the event as a whole however you want! I'm not over the moon about it either. I wasn't arguing that it's wonderful this interaction occurred.
I'd look at it the same as a police officer demanding things. It's not illegal for them to say whatever they want, and imply powers they don't have, but it's still coercive and an abuse of powers we've granted them.
Hopefully this ruling applies to more types of government speech.
I don't know that former government officials are the same level of problem that demands from (then) current government officials are.
For example:
> We released a list of 354 names Maine Senate Angus King wanted taken down for reasons like “Rand Paul visit excitement,” “followed by [former Republican opponent Eric] Brakey,” and my personal favorite, “mentions immigration.” For balance we also released a letter from a Republican official at the State Department, Mark Lenzi, who tells Twitter about 14 real Americans “you may want to look into and delete.”
Doesn't the First Amendment protect the right to say "I think this should be taken down"?
(Side note: The Angus King stuff is a misrepresentation. The screenshots are from a spreadsheet - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vS1PbfNEqDCK... - in which a column indicates how the account first came to the King campaign's attention, not the reason they think they warranted action.)
If you're a private citizen, yes. If you're a government employee, speaking in the course of your duties, then it's not your speech, it's government speech. The First Amendment doesn't protect the right of the government to speech, because the government doesn't have rights. What does that even mean, for the US Government to have a right to speak without fear of action being taken against it by the US Government?
If you prefer, it'd make a whole bunch of press conferences unconstitutional.
It's quite common for elected officials to criticize private citizens and businesses. To be concrete: Ted Cruz (and a bunch of others) publicly pressured the NFL over players kneeling at games, in a clear attempt to suppress First Amendment expression by said players, without any hint of consequences.
> What they can't do is order the political speech of citizens be censored.
Agreed. That doesn't appear to have happened. Even the worst examples the Twitter Files sort of reporting could dig up is some loud huffing and puffing followed by a :rolleyes: emoji and inaction from various social networks.
> That appears to be exactly what has been happening.
None of the Twitter Files involve a government order to censor speech.
There's begging, cajoling, suggesting, implying, etc., but they don't have the power to order in most of these cases, and that's evidenced by the fact that quite a bit of the time the social networks said no.
Do feel free to cite an actual order to suppress speech that we can specifically discuss.
> None of the Twitter Files involve a government order to censor speech.
Several of the Twitter Files have given concrete examples of Government officials providing lists of specific examples of speech and/or speakers that they want censored.
Again, here's an example that has already been provided in this sub-thread:
> We released a list of 354 names Maine Senate Angus King wanted taken down for reasons like “Rand Paul visit excitement,” “followed by [former Republican opponent Eric] Brakey,” and my personal favorite, “mentions immigration.” For balance we also released a letter from a Republican official at the State Department, Mark Lenzi, who tells Twitter about 14 real Americans “you may want to look into and delete.”
All of which were backed up by threats from both parties that if the platforms do not do more to censor speech the politicians will get rid of the legal immunity platforms have traditionally had (going back to the postal service, telegraph systems, and the phone company) that those platforms are not legally liable for the contents of the speech of others sent through their system.
Elected officials are not government employees. It is not, in fact, turtles all the way down. They may be paid by the government, but the government does not dictate when they get hired and fired. It's possible that someone may be both an elected official and a government employee, but that's fairly rare (something like: Congressman and member of the military reserve, in which case they're only a government employee while activated).
Elected officials set policies. Government employees implement those broad policies into action. You can change the policies your representative is pushing by changing the representative. I'm a little unclear on where exactly the FBI director falls (because he's appointed to his job with the advice and consent of the Senate, which makes a difference for these things, maybe). A FBI field office head chanting "locker up" in a press conference would be violation though, yes.
The IRS disagrees, but obviously different legal contexts have different definitions, but I am aware of none supporting the distinction you are trying to make.
Example: Hatch Act provides that persons below the policy-making level in the executive branch of the federal government must not only refrain from political practices that would be illegal for any citizen, but must abstain from "any active part" in political campaigns.
In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Supreme Court held “that when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.”
Obviously, speech and debate clause controls for Federal Congress members.
"you may want to look into and delete" isn't a demand.
Politicians demand censorship all the time, as is their right. They usually don't get what they want, as they don't typically have the right to enforce their desires.
> Rand Paul blasted Twitter on Tuesday for not immediately taking down Richard Marx’s tweet from Sunday in which he offered to buy drinks for the Kentucky neighbor who assaulted the Republican senator in 2017.
He can demand. They can say no. Both are First Amendment protected actions.
> Politicians demand censorship all the time, as is their right.
Sorry, but that just won't fly.
> A federal appeals court in Manhattan says President Trump cannot block critics from his Twitter account, calling it "unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination."
In a 29-page ruling on Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld a lower court's decision that found that Trump violated the First Amendment when he blocked certain Twitter users
Blocking isn't censorship; it does not prevent you from speaking.
Blocking wasn't permissible because it restricted access by citizens to official announcements; it's like banning someone from coming to a town hall meeting or visiting Congress's website.
That's not what the ruling said. Trumps actions weren't impermissible censorship, they were impermissible for other reasons. You can't just assume a court ruling was done for the reason you believe.
> Trumps actions weren't impermissible censorship, they were impermissible for other reasons.
They were impermissible as viewpoint-based censorship of a designated public forum in violation of the First Amendment, you are wrong that it was “for other reasons”.
>Trump may have wanted to silence criticism, but he didn't get away with it, even on his own personal account.
This is a misrepresentation of the facts. Trump was only using his "personal" twitter during his presidency so the court considered it his de-facto presidential account.
What is your theory in posting this? That people who work for the CIA must give up their right to free speech and future private employment? This just reads like unprincipled scare mongering to me.
That was because Trump often used his personal Twitter account for official Presidential stuff instead of using @POTUS or @WhiteHouse.
If Trump had done like other presidents and tried to keep official Presidential business off his personal Twitter account he would have been to block anyone he wanted to.
I'd look at it as some random government bureaucrat demanding it: the fact that the company felt comfortable ignoring said random bureaucrat when it suited them seems to indicate they didn't feel coerced at all
So if they did it to me, it's bad, but to Facebook it's OK? In some court cases the actual harm matters, and sometimes it's the principle that matters.
Laura at the DMV could tell me to disallow ISIS from buying stuff from my company and there's no way I could consider that an actionable threat of any kind.
if the random government bureaucrat "demanded" something of you you didn't want to do, and you laughed him or her out of the room, both actions are okay
it seems Facebook was more polite than that, instead just ignoring the random government bureaucrat when it suited them
also, in American courts, it is the actual harm that matters. No harm, no standing, no court case.
> also, in American courts, it is the actual harm that matters. No harm, no standing, no court case.
Traditionally, yes, although that didn't stop SCOTUS from ruling last week in a case in which the plaintiff experienced no harm (not to mention admitted to perjury).
> When Smith's suit was filed at the federal district court in 2016, she had not begun designing websites, nor had she received any requests to design a wedding website for a same-sex couple. In 2017, her lawyers ADF filed an affidavit from Smith stating that she had received such a request several days after the initial filing, and appended a copy of the request. Smith never responded to the request, and has stated that she feared she would violate Colorado's law if she were to do so. However, the name, email, and phone number on the online form belong to a man who has long been married to a woman, and who stated that he never submitted such a request, as reported by The New Republic on June 29, 2023, a day before the Supreme Court's decision was released.
> That narrative was thrown into question last week after The New Republic published an article on Stewart, who denied ever having reached out to Smith. It quoted him saying he was a web designer who has been married to a woman for years.
> “I wouldn’t want anybody to … make me a wedding website?” the man identified only as Stewart told the magazine. “I’m married, I have a child — I’m not really sure where that came from? But somebody’s using false information in a Supreme Court filing document.”
Perjury is probably a stretch, and it's unlikely to affect the ruling any.
> Perjury is probably a stretch, and it's unlikely to affect the ruling any.
Perjury is not a stretch. The case was revised before it reached SCOTUS, but her original court filing claimed that she had received a request from a specific named individual to design a website for his gay wedding.
Not only has that individual - who is a heterosexual man already married to a woman - denied ever making a request, but the plaintiff herself later claimed in court documents, under penalty of perjury, that she had not yet received a request to design a wedding website from a gay couple.
The case as presented to SCOTUS did not contain any perjurous claims, but the original case undeniably did.
I can't find evidence of that. From the NBC article, which calls the original request one asking for "pre-enforcement review":
> Smith sued in 2016 saying she wanted to design wedding websites but was concerned that the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act would force her to put together websites for same-sex weddings, as well. She said she wanted to post a statement on her website making clear her opposition to doing so.
The claim about the email is in a later filing as an update. Its existence doesn't seem to be in question; its provenance does, but that could happen without the plaintiff's involvement. You'd have to prove they knew it was bullshit.
> A Colorado web designer who the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday could refuse to make wedding websites for gay couples cited a request from a man who says he never asked to work with her.
A pre-emptive request backed up by a fake customer does not equal standing (in a sane court but SCOTUS left sanity behind a couple of justice appointments ago.)
Someone said, "I want to do this," and the government credibly responded, "Do that and we'll take action against you." This equals standing for pre-enforcement actions, because the government is threatening to do something. If the government had responded, "Go ahead, we don't care", then that someone would not have standing. You don't always have to wait for the government to actually take action against you to have standing, so long as you can prove the government would take action against you if you did the thing.
There are "criminal attempt" and "conspiracy" charges, so in general it's possible, but probably not in this case.
If I'm reading this right, the plaintiffs felt harmed because their information they might have received was effectively censored. Not all of the sources were, but enough of them were removed that would have been published without the government's intervention.
This is one of those times where I look at what someone says, and think, "Aren't you the same people who thought X about Y, and now, you think something that seems totally contradictory because Y' happens to support the opposite side?" Then, I realize all sides are comprised of heterogenous people with ideas that happen to have similar throughlines, and I'm comparing your statement to something I read from someone I perceived as being from the same side.
To this specific topic, could you clarify your position? Do you think the same is applicable to a police officer or an IRS agent?
The specific thing that made me think your statement was contradictory was police. The left was demanding police to be accountable seemingly five minutes ago. For most police departments, I think they went too far in saying the whole system was corrupt. I think there's at least an argument to be made about the extent of the Biden administration's involvement, but certainly you think the person doing the coercion should be punished, right?
It seems to me that any case of a "random bureaucrat" attempting to coerce a citizen or company outside of their civil mandate should be punished to the maximum extent of the law. If there isn't a criminal punishment already for this, one should be created and applied retroactively because it should be common sense.
if an IRS employee told you that you needed to delete a social media post, you'd obviously realize they have no authority to do so, just like a BLS employee for example, and you could tell either to go stuff themselves in as polite a fashion as you prefer
in the case of a police officer, our current society is one in which
police officers can and often do immediately assault and/or shoot and/or kill you for doing or being something they don't like, regardless of whether you're right or wrong, and they can do so with little question and no internal criticism or retribution or punishment, which is an entirely different issue in and of itself
the same is obviously not true of Steve who works at the IRS. Steve would be tried for murder. So would Flaherty.
> after all, it anyone can feel comfortable demanding anything, what matters is what they get
Not when that someone is the government or its representative. The act of asking can itself be a violation of your rights as there’s an implication that if you do not comply their may be some unknown ramifications.
Judges are savvy enough to know that threats need not be verbalized to be received.
Democrats have threatened it as well: "Democrats Want To Hold Social Media Companies Responsible For Health Misinformation"
Co-sponsored by Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, the Health Misinformation Act targets a provision in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects platforms from being held liable for what their users post in most cases.
S.5020 - A bill to repeal section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934.
Sponsor: Sen. Graham, Lindsey [R-SC]
you're now free to respond to the substance of the post you replied to: it was, in fact, a GOP controlled Senate which performed the action in question
Someone asked what the implied threat was to social media companies if they didn't comply with takedown request from the government. I said they (the government) threatened to revoke section 230. Someone replied with "well it was the GOP controlled congress," of which I replied that the Democrats also threatened revoking section 230.
Just to back this up, the ACLU also warned against the dismantlement of section 230 as a serious threat to freedom of speech, and I agree with them on this topic.
They here refers to the Biden administration, unless you're alleging the Biden administration conspired with a Republican Congress to coerce social networks into silencing posts that Republicans themselves were in favor of
it's laughable on its face that this is a plausible threat, and the fact that Facebook totally ignored the "demands" when it suited them indicates empirically that there was no such implied threat they felt pressured by
indeed, Facebook, with knowledge of US partisanship, and a hand in increasing it, was best suited to dismiss such a bipartisan conspiracy theory aimed at silencing such speech a Republican Congress would never dream of silencing
First you said articulated, not proof, so you're moving the goalposts to be argumentative and aren't discussing in good faith. Second, you seem to be under the impression that unless everyone caves to coercion 100% of the time, then it isn't coercion, which is obviously a fallacy. Just because someone doesn't pay when they are blackmailed doesn't mean they weren't blackmailed.
Both political parties threatened to rewrite section 230 on multiple occasions. This would effectively bankrupt most social media companies. The fact that you are unable or unwilling see this as coercion is your blind spot, not everyone else's.
You are the one claiming there was a credible threat, so it's upon you to show it.
Empirically, Facebook's denials when it suited them suggests they did not feel any such threat. The fact that they sometimes agreed is not an affirmative indication of such a threat, as they could have easily done so on the merits of the requests.
The fact that the proposed action would require Biden to collude with the GOP congress to censor speech the GOP congress supports most heavily and would never censor, combined with the knowledge of reality that such collusion would never happen, suggests that the threat could not exist even theoretically.
So, now's your chance to put forward an alternative case for there being a credible threat, rather than just an angry dude impotently swearing at social media with no actual power to repeal section 230 short of said implausible collusion. After all, Biden political appointee or not, he and I have exactly the same power to convince the GOP to censor the speech in question: None. Are my angry requests to Facebook similarly plausibly "threatening"? Obviously not.
Let me restate your position to make sure I have it:
1. Because Facebook didn't comply with every request, they never felt coerced and neither did any other social media company, therefore no social media company was coerced.
2. The Democrats who threatened to repeal or modify 230 and the Republicans who threatened to repeal or modify 230 would never repeal or modify 230 because of party politics, therefore this wasn't a realistic threat and therefore not form of coercion.
your argument was summarized above, and it simply doesn't present a plausible scenario:
the dude swearing at Facebook had no power to repeal section 230, no power to control the GOP Senate into doing so, and no plausible path to convincing the GOP to censor the sort of content in question (content the GOP itself supports, content they oppose censoring)
in short: the "threat" you described isn't realistic or plausible, least of all by Facebook, and a claim of coercion requires that the threat be plausible, not imaginary and contrived
You left a bit out here. He is a representative of the government demanding that a private company censor speech supporting policies it opposes and speech about the president's family among other things.
"A February 2021 message in which Flaherty asked Twitter to remove a parody account related to Hunter Biden's daughter said, 'Cannot stress the degree to which this needs to be resolved immediately. Please remove this account immediately.'"
he's actually not a representative at all, we elect those
he's a random government bureaucrat who didn't appear to have any actual power besides sending angry letters, and who Facebook felt totally comfortable ignoring
the article presented a great example proving me right here: even he admits facebook ignored his impotent wails when it didn't suit them to satisfy him
It's such an odd thing. I don't think I've ever heard people refusing to say Stalin or Hitler's names. Andrew Jackson isn't alluded to with euphemisms, despite being a piece of shit who perpetrated genocide among other crimes. Nixon doesn't get this for his crimes and shitty policies, nor Truman for the a-bombs or FDR for mass internment of American citizens.
It seems like an idea people got from Harry Potter refusing to say Voldemort.
Wait, you think that when a random official says something, it carries the weight of the US Government, but when _the president_ says it, it does not? I'm not sure that you've thought this through fully.
> When the White House called up Twitter in the early morning hours of September 9, 2019, officials had what they believed was a serious issue to report: Famous model Chrissy Teigen had just called President Donald Trump “a pussy ass bitch” on Twitter — and the White House wanted the tweet to come down.
> That exchange — revealed during Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on Twitter by Rep. Gerry Connolly — and others like it are nowhere to be found in Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” releases, which have focused almost exclusively on requests from Democrats and the feds to the social media company.
> “It was strange to me when all of these investigations were announced because it was all about the exact same stuff that we had done [when Donald Trump was in office],” one former top aide to a senior Trump administration official tells Rolling Stone. “It was normal.”
It's like when a rightist explains that Donald was a great president because he didn't "drone strike people like Obama did." The doublethink is ridiculous.
What she did to national security is despicable. She should have relied on WhatsApp like normal people with security clearances use for secure communication.
Now imagine if the same words were used by the trump admin personnel! Left media would scream words like bullying. This gives complete justification and vindication of how the trump admin behaved! Untouchable.
This country’s reputation is built upon the idea of collaboration and compromise. Both administrations behaving with such obtuseness means this is a new chapter.
My comment was not about how they are being prosecuted. But just about the ethics of doing something like that. Especially when the prior admin are heavily perceived as bullies. And they were supposed to be different.
The fact that the Biden admin behaved the same way vindicates them from accusations that Trump admin behaved unjustly or they should be disciplined for such inappropriateness.
I don't think anybody called for the Trump admin to be disciplined for denigrating Facebook and Twitter, certainly not to the extent that we're seeing here.
Sure sounds like a relationship where the power only goes one direction and the Flaherty was very comfortable demanding whatever he wanted.