I am asking if there is any legal precedent for the government forcing any traditional publisher to explain what legal speech they choose or refuse to publish. If a newspaper decided they want to publish a bunch of letters sent to them by the public (as they do), is there precedent for the government compelling the newspaper to explain the basis by which they choose which letters to publish or forbid?
I think this is a case of "it's different because computers", and this wouldn't fly if it were a traditional publisher putting ink on paper.
> I am asking if there is any legal precedent for the government forcing any traditional publisher to explain what legal speech they choose or refuse to publish.
Either you're failing to understand the question, or you're trying to be disingenuous about it.
Newspapers editorialize their content. Elon Musk's Twitter is not, and is claiming to have no control over what content third parties publish throught their service.
However, Elon Musk's Twitter is also manipulating the contents that third parties publish through their service by means of moderation/censorship and boosting.
Given they claim they hold no editorial control over what goes through their pipes but still manipulate the content, they have a responsibility to demonstrate that they are not liable for that content by specifying exactly which rules they enforce and how they enforce them.
Do you understand the difference between assuming responsibility over the content, and claiming that they are not liable for the content they distribute because they don't pick and choose what goes through their pipes?
> If users can still see original tweet content (...)
It was already well established that they can't. For example, when Elon Musk's Twitter was already caught shadow-banning people posting pro-Ukraine content, and when Elon Musk open-sourced some of the original Twitter's code, people found out that it hardcoded settings to ban discussions on Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Past HN discussion on Musk's censorship of the invasion of Ukraine:
it did not ban discussions, the algorithm was for ranking tweets in timeline.
because you cannot fit all trillions of tweets into everyone's timeline - by definition some tweets will have to be chosen over the overs.
if a user posted something about Ukraine, his tweet would still show up in his follower's timeline for "Following", just not Featured (For You) and not always. Mind you I follow this topic and my feed (For You) is like 50% of tweets covering Ukr-Rus war updates. So I never feel any censorship for the war from titter.
it is not censorship, because if you follow a user you would still see tweets in its original content without any altering
> it did not ban discussions, the algorithm was for ranking tweets in timeline.
Not really. Twitter was hardcoded to downrank discussions on Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and is now shadow-banning pro-Ukraine users but strangely not pro-Russia.
Nevertheless, the whole point is that Elon Musk's Twitter needs to specify how it's censoring tweets, as they cannot claim they don't editorialize while actively suppressing and censoring discussions that contrasts with their personal preferences. Russia's invasion of Ukraine is a mere example on the broad editorial reach of Elon Musk's Twitter, and one where Elon Musk himself was already caught red-handed supporting the invaders.
