Comment by HankStallone
5 months ago
It was. At the time, they felt like they were doing the right thing -- the heroic thing, even -- in keeping dangerous disinformation away from the public view. They weren't shy about their position that censorship in that case was good and necessary. Not the ones who said it on TV, and not the ones who said it to me across the dinner table.
For Google now to pretend Biden twisted their arm is pretty rich. They'd better have a verifiable paper trail to prove that, if they expect anyone with a memory five years long to believe it.
To be fair, even if they were being honest about Biden twisting their arm (I don't buy it), the timing makes it impossible to believe their claim.
Why wouldn't you buy it?
The Twitter files showed direct communications from the administration asking them ban specific users like Alex Berenson, Dr. Martin Kulldorff, and Dr. Andrew Bostom: https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/twitter-files-10th-i...
Meta submitted direct communications from the administration pressuring them to ban people as part of a congressional investigation: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/27/did-bidens-white-ho...
It would be more surprising if they left Google alone.
The implication of saying they were "pressed" by the Biden admin (as they claim in the letter) is that Google was unwilling. I don't buy that. They were complicit and are now throwing the Biden admin under the bus because it is politically convenient. Just like how the Twitter files showed that Twitter was complicit in it.
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If you read those documents, you will see that the administration was telling them that those accounts were in violation of Twitter TOS. They simply said "hey, this user is violating your TOS, what are you gonna do about it?", and Twitter simply applied their rules.
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They don't need a paper trail. Conservatives will believe anything damning they see about liberals. Just vague accusations or outright lies work plenty well to keep conservatives foaming at the mouth over imagined issues.