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They’re also going to ban you and all of your relatives from receiving a Visa if you’ve previously worked in content moderation, fact-checking, trust/safety. The most free speech hostile administration in modern history.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-orders...



[flagged]


"You, a private company, are not allowed to perform content moderation on your own platform, and if you do, we, the Federal government, will punish you" is a clear First Amendment violation.


Was it a First Amendment violation when the Biden admin leaned on Facebook and Twitter to censor speculation about the origins of Covid?


Thus far, per SCOTUS (Barrett, joined by Roberts, Sotomayor, Kagan, Kavanaugh, Jackson), no.

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/supreme-court-rules-in-...

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/justices-side-with-biden-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murthy_v._Missouri

(Nor was it illegal when the Trump administration did the same thing. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-tru...)

> 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.

> The Trump administration and its allied Republicans in Congress routinely asked Twitter to take down posts they objected to — the exact behavior that they’re claiming makes President Biden, the Democrats, and Twitter complicit in an anti-free speech conspiracy to muzzle conservatives online.

Asking is legal. Punishing non-compliance is not.


And the Trump administration has leapfrogged all of the 'asking' on 1st amendment issues -- they're actively suing news stations, entering shake-down agreements with colleges about what they're allowed to teach, deporting green card holders for their political opinions, cancelling already-awarded research grants based purely on the topic being studied ... anyone pretending like this is remotely comparable to anything that happened under Biden isn't a serious person.


Freedom of speech is protected against government limitations, in the US. Not against private parties' editorial or moderation roles. And even against government suppression there are numerous limits, including for example fraud, incitement, and threats.

The same administration "defending" free speech rights in your view has taken an exceptionally stringent view against political speech, particularly against university campuses, and has sued multiple journalistic organisations, including the BBC, ABC News, the Des Moines Register, CBS 60 Minutes, Simon & Schuster, and CNN:

<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0mx28vlp4wo>

<https://www.reuters.com/world/us/donald-trumps-lawsuits-agai...>

The hypocrisy is blatant, which makes one presume it is the point.




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