We know from the Twitter document dumps that government officials on both sides of the aisle have been demanding that speech (and speakers) critical of them, their preferred policies and/or their political party be censored.

> intimidation requires an actual threat

Threatening to yank section 230 of the Communications Decency Act if platforms don't ramp up their censorship is an actual threat.

> You may have never heard of it, but Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is the legal backbone of the internet. The law was created almost 30 years ago to protect internet platforms from liability for many of the things third parties say or do on them.

Decades later, it’s never been more controversial. People from both political parties and all three branches of government have threatened to reform or even repeal it.

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/28/21273241/section-230-ex...

The opposite is true.

The Constitution's protection of individual citizen free speech very specifically is a restriction on the government (and its officials acting in government capacity, which is how the government speaks) from acting to limit the speech of citizens under most circumstances.

Which is exactly the case in question.

This is how Constitutional protections work. They limit the capacity of the government and its officials in order to protect the Rights of individual citizens.

Case law has long held that even the politest censorship request by the government is viewed as threat of force.

The propaganda around this issue is weak to the point of being insulting.