The sad part is anticipate the current administration will see this report and attack any federal funds William and Mary receive unless they remove and retract the data.
William and Mary actually have a very in depth page on their opposition to federal suppression of free speech and what they are doing about it: https://www.wm.edu/sites/federalguidelines/
I may be misremembering but I believe they wrote a similar letter a few years ago when Facebook and others were in the news for working with the government to suppress speech during the lockdown. I really admire W&M for their consistency in supporting the issue
Are you referring to the case that went all the way to SCOTUS who ruled that the government is in fact allowed to report things to social media companies (1st Amendment protected speech) and that social media companies, if they want to, are allowed to act on those reports (also 1st Amendment protected speech)?
I think the main missing element was that the social media companies didn't even claim to be coerced by the government whatsoever and have consistently stated they moderated content as they saw fit on their own platforms (which, again, is their 1st Amendment right)
Interesting because during this exact time period, every social media company declined all sorts of requests from the government, as I'm sure they do a couple dozen or hundred times per day?
I wonder if these multi-billion dollar companies have anyone on staff who is aware of the company's 1st Amendment rights (they do).
Edit: jcranmer's comment reminded me to be explicit on this: it is in fact illegal for the government to coerce private parties to regulate speech. That's why it's important that those private parties never claimed they were coerced, and there's given that they agreed with some requests and didn't with others, there's no evidence whatsoever they were coerced.
Just so you're aware, an actual implied threat like that is considered an unconstitutional act by the government. It's just that a politician complaining about social media on the campaign trail isn't anywhere near the level of implied threat to be considered unconstitutional.
Oh sorry. As a BIPOC, I meant the "nice business; here's a list of people I don't like; no threats implied; to be clear: we are not threatening you; do what you like with this list" loophole.
This is a cool skill, it’s like three-hop mind-reading.
You somehow know that the platforms were coerced despite them never claiming it, and they were specifically coerced by threats that were never actually stated!
Informed by the government using the First Amendment "will someone rid me of this troublesome priest?" the company used their First Amendment to rid them of the troublesome priest. I should point out that I was just using the First Amendment to talk about them very specifically not being coerced. In fact I actually claimed (using the First Amendment) that they made it clear it wasn't a threat. Your comment (doubtless made under the First Amendment) assumes that I said the opposite.
