"They came for..." in this comment refers to "the marketplace of ideas built a brief consensus against..."

The "they came for..." in the famous poem, and in reference to today's Trump administration, refers to "the government utilized state power to advance or suppress certain ideas."

These are not the same at all.

A few specific bullets:

* Universities (especially private ones) are allowed to have ideological biases. If you disagree with them, go to a different university, criticize them, or create your own university.

* At least in the US, the health institutions merely flagged low-quality information to social media companies. It was up to the social media companies as to whether they wanted to respond -- in many cases they did not. This went to SCOTUS who decided there was no evidence that social media companies were coerced by the health institutions, partially because the social media companies created and began enforcing their policies prior to any of the alleged coercion

Note: None of this applies to the UK which really does have a free speech issue, but also doesn't really have anything close to as strong a legal guarantee of free speech and maybe should.

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ethical_source 13 hours ago | parent [-]

> Universities (especially private ones) are allowed to have ideological biases

Universities as private associations can have whatever biases they want. What they can't do is take public money earmarked for promoting debate and discovery and use it to promulgate a particular ideology, discriminate on the basis of immutable protected characteristics, or do other things contrary to public policy.

If they want the money from the public, they need to serve the public --- the whole public, not the part that agrees with administrators who mandate diversity statements for hiring.

> At least in the US, the health institutions merely flagged low-quality information to social media companies

There are public records of highly placed government officials emailing social media company leadership and demanding that specific posts be taken down. Not only is this state censorship in all but name, it's also unconstitutional under Vullo and other precedents.

Yes, the UK is worse. That doesn't make the behavior of the previous administration acceptable or consistent with American values.

	▲	UncleMeat 8 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Liberty University receives public funds. It has an explicit ideological project. It recently fired a member of its IT staff for being trans.
	▲	estearum 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		What federal money gets sent to universities with the earmark “promote debate and discovery?” The vast majority of federal money is given to universities to execute research contracts. It is simply not true that if you receive any federal money your institution cannot have biases or opinions. What would that even mean in practice? They cannot use federal money specifically for political activities, but merely receiving public funding does not relieve you of your First Amendment rights. If anything, the reality is the opposite of what you suggest: your contracted money cannot be threatened on the basis of your institution’s (protected) biases or opinions. Re public health: The government itself has a First Amendment right to speak with and request action from private organizations, and those organizations have a First Amendment right to accept or decline those requests. Vullo absolutely did not find the government has no ability to request action, it said it has no ability to coerce action. As it relates to COVID, we don’t need to speculate: this is the exact question that was asked in Murthy vs Missouri. SCOTUS found lack of standing because the “censorship” in question pre-dated the “coercion” in question. Private platforms are absolutely allowed to create and enforce content policies! You cannot infer “the platforms were coerced” from the following set of facts: 1. The platforms made and enforced policies prior to government requests 2. The government made requests 3. Some of those requests were satisfied and others were declined 4. There was no punishment or threatened punishment for decline 5. The platforms said they were not coerced That’s what SCOTUS and IMO any reasonable person would find.