Democrats conspire with Big Tech to silence opposition

 Thomas Lifson:

Forget about those claims that Big Tech has every right to censor political information on their platforms because they are private firms. That’s not true when these companies operate as “state actors” working in collusion with or at the command of government entities.

Judicial Watch once again has uncovered stunning proof of malfeasance through lawsuits based on freedom of information laws. (I donate to Judicial Watch because of the bang-for-the-buck they provide, and I urge readers to consider donating, too; click here to do so.)

Judicial Watch announced today that it received 540 pages and a supplemental four pages of documents from the office of the Secretary of State of California revealing how state officials pressured social media companies (Twitter, Facebook, Google (YouTube)) to censor posts about the 2020 election. Included in these documents were “misinformation briefings” emails that were compiled by communications firm SKDK, that lists Biden for President as their top client of 2020. The documents show how the state agency successfully pressured YouTube to censor a Judicial Watch video concerning the vote by mail and a Judicial Watch lawsuit settlement about California voter roll clean up.

The records were obtained in response to Judicial Watch’s California Public Records Act (CPRA) requests to the Office of the California Secretary of State for records related to the Office of Election Cybersecurity’s database of social media posts; communications with social media companies; and other social media related records regarding the 2020 elections.

Judicial Watch was alerted to the abuse by a post late last year in CalMatters – that proved to be true, according to the uncovered documents:

The Office of Election Cybersecurity in the California Secretary of State’s office monitored and tracked social media posts, decided if they were misinformation, stored the posts in an internal database coded by threat level, and on 31 different occasions requested posts be removed. In 24 cases, the social media companies agreed and either took down the posts or flagged them as misinformation, according to Jenna Dresner, senior public information officer for the Office of Election Cybersecurity.

“We don’t take down posts, that is not our role to play,” Dresner said. “We alert potential sources of misinformation to the social media companies and we let them make that call based on community standards they created.” 

This is certainly “collusion” (remember how much the media liked to throw around that term with regard to the utterly fictitious charge that the Trump 2016 campaign colluded with Russia?) if not outright conspiracy – as in conspiracy to violate the civil rights (the First Amendment) of citizens. I am no lawyer, but I have the impression that one can sue for conspiracies to violate civil rights.

The activities were so questionable that one California bureaucrat worried about it and about how to put a lid on discovery of the activities, as Sundance highlights....

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There is more. 

Florida and Texas are taking steps to deal with the abuse.  Don't expect Democrats to do much on a national level because they benefit from the conspiracy to silence the opposition.