S.5020 - A bill to repeal section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934.
Sponsor: Sen. Graham, Lindsey [R-SC]
you're now free to respond to the substance of the post you replied to: it was, in fact, a GOP controlled Senate which performed the action in question
Someone asked what the implied threat was to social media companies if they didn't comply with takedown request from the government. I said they (the government) threatened to revoke section 230. Someone replied with "well it was the GOP controlled congress," of which I replied that the Democrats also threatened revoking section 230.
Just to back this up, the ACLU also warned against the dismantlement of section 230 as a serious threat to freedom of speech, and I agree with them on this topic.
They here refers to the Biden administration, unless you're alleging the Biden administration conspired with a Republican Congress to coerce social networks into silencing posts that Republicans themselves were in favor of
it's laughable on its face that this is a plausible threat, and the fact that Facebook totally ignored the "demands" when it suited them indicates empirically that there was no such implied threat they felt pressured by
indeed, Facebook, with knowledge of US partisanship, and a hand in increasing it, was best suited to dismiss such a bipartisan conspiracy theory aimed at silencing such speech a Republican Congress would never dream of silencing
First you said articulated, not proof, so you're moving the goalposts to be argumentative and aren't discussing in good faith. Second, you seem to be under the impression that unless everyone caves to coercion 100% of the time, then it isn't coercion, which is obviously a fallacy. Just because someone doesn't pay when they are blackmailed doesn't mean they weren't blackmailed.
Both political parties threatened to rewrite section 230 on multiple occasions. This would effectively bankrupt most social media companies. The fact that you are unable or unwilling see this as coercion is your blind spot, not everyone else's.
You are the one claiming there was a credible threat, so it's upon you to show it.
Empirically, Facebook's denials when it suited them suggests they did not feel any such threat. The fact that they sometimes agreed is not an affirmative indication of such a threat, as they could have easily done so on the merits of the requests.
The fact that the proposed action would require Biden to collude with the GOP congress to censor speech the GOP congress supports most heavily and would never censor, combined with the knowledge of reality that such collusion would never happen, suggests that the threat could not exist even theoretically.
So, now's your chance to put forward an alternative case for there being a credible threat, rather than just an angry dude impotently swearing at social media with no actual power to repeal section 230 short of said implausible collusion. After all, Biden political appointee or not, he and I have exactly the same power to convince the GOP to censor the speech in question: None. Are my angry requests to Facebook similarly plausibly "threatening"? Obviously not.
Let me restate your position to make sure I have it:
1. Because Facebook didn't comply with every request, they never felt coerced and neither did any other social media company, therefore no social media company was coerced.
2. The Democrats who threatened to repeal or modify 230 and the Republicans who threatened to repeal or modify 230 would never repeal or modify 230 because of party politics, therefore this wasn't a realistic threat and therefore not form of coercion.
your argument was summarized above, and it simply doesn't present a plausible scenario:
the dude swearing at Facebook had no power to repeal section 230, no power to control the GOP Senate into doing so, and no plausible path to convincing the GOP to censor the sort of content in question (content the GOP itself supports, content they oppose censoring)
in short: the "threat" you described isn't realistic or plausible, least of all by Facebook, and a claim of coercion requires that the threat be plausible, not imaginary and contrived
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/502...
S.5020 - A bill to repeal section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934.
Sponsor: Sen. Graham, Lindsey [R-SC]
you're now free to respond to the substance of the post you replied to: it was, in fact, a GOP controlled Senate which performed the action in question