Reading this document, it's in extremely bad faith:
> We start with coercion. On multiple occasions, the officials coerced
the platforms into direct action via urgent, uncompromising demands to
moderate content. Privately, the officials were not shy in their requests—
they asked the platforms to remove posts “ASAP”
The ASAP was in reference to a case of revenge porn, something not only against the Twitter TOS, but illegal.
> When the platforms did not comply, officials followed up by asking why posts
were “still up,” stating (1) “how does something like [this] happen,” (2)
“what good is” flagging if it did not result in content moderation, (3) “I don’t
know why you guys can’t figure this out,” and (4) “you are hiding the ball,”
Again, this was in reference to illegal content (iirc an OFAC sanctioned entity not only posting content but making money off it). Using such language when a private company isn't following the law isn't "coercion for censorship".
This reads like a political document by partisan lawyers. This document makes no attempt to distinguish between actually illegal content and suggested violations of TOS (such as when spreading COVID disinfo was against Twitter's rules, which it no longer is). It provides no context for how this "coercion" was mostly civil servants either pointing out violations of Twitter's own rules, or federal crimes. Either way, inaction was baffling, as communicated.
But, again, the mere fact that Twitter ignored so much of this, so often, proves they clearly didn't feel the need to respond to gov requests as if they had to.
> We start with coercion. On multiple occasions, the officials coerced the platforms into direct action via urgent, uncompromising demands to moderate content. Privately, the officials were not shy in their requests— they asked the platforms to remove posts “ASAP”
The ASAP was in reference to a case of revenge porn, something not only against the Twitter TOS, but illegal.
> When the platforms did not comply, officials followed up by asking why posts were “still up,” stating (1) “how does something like [this] happen,” (2) “what good is” flagging if it did not result in content moderation, (3) “I don’t know why you guys can’t figure this out,” and (4) “you are hiding the ball,”
Again, this was in reference to illegal content (iirc an OFAC sanctioned entity not only posting content but making money off it). Using such language when a private company isn't following the law isn't "coercion for censorship".
This reads like a political document by partisan lawyers. This document makes no attempt to distinguish between actually illegal content and suggested violations of TOS (such as when spreading COVID disinfo was against Twitter's rules, which it no longer is). It provides no context for how this "coercion" was mostly civil servants either pointing out violations of Twitter's own rules, or federal crimes. Either way, inaction was baffling, as communicated.
But, again, the mere fact that Twitter ignored so much of this, so often, proves they clearly didn't feel the need to respond to gov requests as if they had to.