I’m guessing there’s legal pressure from some countries, and to stay in their good graces (i.e. ward off alternatives), they’re making these policies global.

I’ll tell you why. Government uses soft threats to encourage private business to censor things. I know some of you guys don’t like this side of this parallel story, but do you remember when the FBI was marking posts for twitter to take down as “misinformation,” and accounts to ban, that then was shown to not be misinformation, but rather just inconvenient for the current presidency in charge. Whether you like it or not, that happened, and it was wrong.

The legal code in the US is so large and companies engage in so much activity that it is impossible to run a 100% legal business. Companies instead run by an “ask forgiveness later” model. It’s the only one that can actually work in the US. But to be able to run that model you need the good graces of the government. The government can always decide to prosecute on an otherwise small matter instead of advise correction. So when it says jump companies do it.

There was a time when you could be banned off of twitter for saying factual things the FBI didn’t like. And it’s not like the FBI didn’t know better. We didn’t need independent verification of the Hunter Biden emails because we had confirmed cryptographic signatures on all of the emails. Journalists get a pass because they are technologically illiterate, but the FBI and Twitter sure didn’t. The FBI said “It looks like something Russia would hoax.” Sure. It does. But they didn’t because we have cryptographic signitures. Always did.

What’s crazy about this is that the supreme court ruled against this use of third parties. But the practice wasn’t new when it hit social media because it’s been a long practice with payment processors. So my question when that ruling came out was “what about the existing similar practice in payment processors.” Apparently the government and processors are still in cahoots in violation of that ruling. That relationship was actually started in an effort to crack down on bestiality porn, which is never the less legal in the US.

So the question is do you like to government directing third parties to censor?

Probably image. They don’t want to be associated with something they think the public will perceive as negative. Bitcoin was vilified initially because “criminals were using it” (but let’s forget about the part where cash is also untraceable). So they prob don’t want to be the “credit card company that supports pedophiles and rapists”