Free speech erosion under Biden... can you elaborate?

Nothing productive will come out of this conversation.

jcranmer 12 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There are a lot of people who are unhappy with the steps the government took to crack down on COVID misinformation, and some people are still upset about Twitter's decision to limit spread of the Hunter Biden laptop story (which was entirely unilateral, and reversed within 24 hours).

Both of these took place in 2020, when Trump was president, but of course Trump's greatest coup was to make everybody think Biden was president in 2020.

	▲	RickJWagner 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The number of media outlets that spiked the laptop story is shameful. There really isn’t a good excuse.

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freedomben 12 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The administration put pressure on tech companies to make them censor people for "disinformation". For example:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/mark-zuckerbe...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_Files

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers...

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alphabettsy 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Remind me who was president in 2020..

	▲	freedomben 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Fair, that one wasn't a good example for this. Though IMHO it's not just a Biden problem, it's a "everybody in power" problem. They just can't seem to resist (ab)using their power to shape the conversation and censor their opponents. It's also not new, it's been happening for hundreds of years at least. But it did get a lot more brazen under Biden IMHO with Twitter/Facebook etc and admin officials telling private companies what to censor (err, "moderate").

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greekrich92 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Damn it's really an infringement on our rights that they cracked down on people yelling "fire" in a crowded theater

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jcranmer 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is your regularly mandated PSA that the quote about "yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater" comes from Schenck v US, which used that analogy to justify why the government could ban people from protesting the draft in WW1. It is not good law anymore, and has been fully superseded since the Brandenburg v Ohio case which limited the exemption to "imminent lawless action."

	▲	greekrich92 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Oh well when you put it that way, I guess it's good that kids are dying of measles again.

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freedomben 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Read the links. It wasn't just that. People from the administration were actively talking with social media companies and telling them to take stuff down. At some points they even demanded it.

andy do you really think the Hunter Biden laptop story was equivalent or even close to "yelling fire in a crowded theatre"?

	▲	Hikikomori 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They didn't. Fbi told Facebook etc to be on the lookout for Russia pushing stories to influence elections etc, they didn't ask them to do anything specific. Bidens campaign did ask Twitter to remove nudes of his son, which already broke Twitters own rules. This is why the twitterfiles were a nothing burger.