> wasn't Google/Youtube banning so much as government ordering private companies to do so
No, it was not. It’s particularly silly to suggest this when we have live example of such orders right now.
The companies were nudged. (And they were wrong to respond to public pressure.) The President, after all, has a “bully pulpit.” But there were no orders, no credibly threats and plenty of companies didn’t deplatform these folks.
That's what I told my MAGA friends. Biden recommended stuff, Trump threatens stuff. So far only one of them has followed through with action. Trump has threatened business deals and prosecution, and is currently sending government after his opponents with the DoJ. Yet those same people are as quiet as mice now on "government bullying"
> literally had access to JIRA at Twitter so they could file tickets against accounts
I’m not disputing that they coördinated. I’m challenging that they were coerced.
We wouldn’t describe Fox News altering a script on account of a friendly call from Miller and friends the “government ordering private companies” around. (Or, say, Florida opening their criminal justice records to ICE the federal government ordering states around.) Twitter’s leadership and the Biden administration saw eye to eye. This is a story about a media monoculture and private censorship, not government censorship.
YouTube using its prime homepage real estate for videos telling people to get vaccinated, which also pissed off the target audience, didn't seem like just some opinionated YouTube exec's doing.
It's extremely obvious on twitter. blue check accounts that post every few minutes 24/7 with profiles that say stuff like "true believer, wife, lover, seeker-of-truth. Don't DM me, I don't answer" . They are on there in the hundreds of thousands.
Zuckerberg mentioned meta were getting government employees that were calling Facebook absolutely furious, and when they didn’t take down legal speech administration did not approve of, there was an immediate investigation launched into Meta that he considers retaliatory.
It was not. No threats were made, and Twitter didn’t blindly follow the FBI’s guidance.
The simple truth is the leftist elements that wanted to control the debate were there in the White House and in Twitter’s San Francisco offices. Nobody had to be coerced, they were coördinating.
Musk owned Twitter for years of the Biden admin, at least one year of that was him openly simping for Trump.
So... what sort of threat was this, that suddenly disappeared when Musk bought it? How credible was the threat if Musk was able to release the Twitter Files without repercussions from the Biden admin?
What were those repercussions? Besides just being fired for not doing what their employer wanted (indicating complicity from the company rather than pressure from the government)?
Although if they got banned during the start of covid during the Trump administration then we're talking about 5 years.