I don't see why one's judgment of the situation should depend on whether the government was successful in intimidating Facebook. What matters is that they tried.
Do implied threats count as coercion? Does a threatening tone? Does someone in a position of power making demands they don't actually have the power to enforce count as coercion? I don't know. The judge seems to think they do.
What implied threats, what threatening tone? What position of power?
If you read the examples cited, nothing even remotely comes close to a layperson interpretation of coercion, and I believe the legal definition is more rigorous, not less.
I was specifically responding to the OP's point that this demonstrates power flowing from government to Facebook. The fact that FB ignored the request and did not suffer consequences demonstrates that power does not in fact flow that way.
You're welcome to judge the appropriateness of the event as a whole however you want! I'm not over the moon about it either. I wasn't arguing that it's wonderful this interaction occurred.
