Dystopian Society: Big Tech Complies as Trump DOJ Unmasks Social Media Critics
In a blatant attack on the 1st amendment, the Trump DOJ has been issuing "administrative" subpoenas to unmask their critics, and big tech companies are often complying.
We are living under a tech-driven erosion of privacy and autonomy with many dystopian elements like massive wealth gaps, loss of individual rights, government surveillance, and the use of misinformation to maintain control.
To that end, Donald Trump’s DOJ is blatantly going after critics by asking tech companies to unmask their identities and the tech companies are often complying.
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“Google, Meta and Reddit complied with some of the requests, the government officials said,” the New York Times reported. “In the subpoenas, the department asked the companies for identifying details of accounts that do not have a real person’s name attached and that have criticized ICE or pointed to the locations of ICE agents. The New York Times saw two subpoenas that were sent to Meta over the last six months.”
“The tech companies, which can choose whether or not to provide the information, have said they review government requests before complying. Some of the companies notified the people whom the government had requested data on and gave them 10 to 14 days to fight the subpoena in court.”
Yes these social media companies are private companies, but it’s fair to argue that they function like a town square and more importantly, the speech being targeted by the government is “criticism” of the government, which is protected speech.
There is nuance when it comes to speech that incites or threatens, which is why the administration claims their unmasking is an effort to keep law enforcement safe (a claim they have repeatedly made in courts to justify violence by ICE, but these claims have repeatedly been proven to be untrue, giving further rise to concerns about this justification), but the subpoenas also target critics of ICE.
Criticism of the government is protected speech.
“The government is taking more liberties than they used to,” Steve Loney, a senior supervising attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Pennsylvania who has represented people whose social media account information was targeted by the Trump administration, told the Times. “It’s a whole other level of frequency and lack of accountability.”
DHS said it had “broad administrative subpoena authority” but did not address questions about its requests, per the Times.
This isn’t a misreading of the situation.
“The Trump administration has aggressively tried tamping down criticism of ICE, partly by identifying Americans who have demonstrated against the agency,” the New York Times reported.
The subpoenas do not require a judge’s approval because they are “administrative subpoenas” are issued by the Department of Homeland Security. And no, this is not normal. In the past, these types of invasive subpoenas were used “sparingly” in cases like child trafficking. But now they’re going after critics.
Not Their First Rodeo
“In 2017, Twitter (now X) sued the federal government to stop an administrative subpoena that asked it to unmask an account critical of the first Trump administration. The subpoena was later withdrawn,” the Times pointed out.
Who can forget the relentless screeching about the “Twitter Files,” which turned out to be a nothingburger of conservative persecution complex, but resulted in Republicans hosting Congressional hearings to amplify their outrage over internal documents and communications released starting in December 2022.
In an attempt to give legitimacy to this farce, used journalists chosen by Elon Musk, like conservative stenographer for billionaires Bari Weiss, who is now running CBS News in a manner to appease and please the president of the United States.
The journalists chosen did not disclose how information was vetted or how much information they were given, but revealed behind-the-scenes content moderation decisions that crafted a fog of insinuation about what they saw as scandalous attacks on the 1st Amendment, like the 2020 suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story, bans on Donald Trump after he incited a deadly insurrection, and interactions with government agencies.
Any contact from a government agency was seen as unacceptable suppression. They labeled the contact as collusion with the government.
Cut to: Not a peep from Republicans?
