Yes, Jimmy Kimmel's suspension was government censorship
36 comments
·September 18, 2025int0x29
mitch3x3
If I wanted to see posts like this I could go to literally any other social media site. The reason I come here is to have stuff like this filtered out.
duxup
There are a lot of articles I don't care for on HN. Outside straight advertising and scams, I don't flag them. That's life, stuff you don't want to see sometimes.
Sometimes I even open those articles wondering what everyone is talking about and sometimes it turns out to be worthwhile, sometimes not.
jleyank
Isn’t it easier to just put your fingers in your ears, shut your eyes, and go la-la-la? Some of us prefer to see what’s going on, particularly when the HN community might be people making the situation worse. Not every bit of software is helpful, and “data”in the wrong hands can be fatal.
josefresco
3rd Active thread today flagged:
Others: Trump designates anti-fascist Antifa movement as a terrorist organization https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-targets-antifa-moveme... UC Berkeley gives personal information for 150 students and staff to government https://www.dailycal.org/news/campus/uc-berkeley-turns-over-...
sidibe
The YC leadership is the people doing the collapsing. Theyve been living for Elon retweets and replies for a while
saubeidl
It's not just anti-controversy systems. It's deliberate censorship efforts by digital brownshirts.
seydor
It s more than that. The fact that they did not conceal that they publicly coerced the tv station to fire him serves as a warning to other media.
benmmurphy
Fire has a good statement on the FCC threat: https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-statement-fcc-threat-revok...
It is good to see there are principled organisations defending free speech.
null
Synaesthesia
I can't believe he got cancelled for such a mild statement.
karakot
When you get cancelled by the goverment it's censorship.
saubeidl
The right wing has exposed their hypocrisy on free speech and cancel culture for the whole world to see. It was never about principles, it was always just self-serving agitprop.
gjsman-1000
All you had to do was look at Reddit or BlueSky after the shooting; and I think they popped a nerve.
In the meantime, the CEOs of Discord, Reddit, Twitch, and Steam have been casually "invited" to Congress to have a little chat this October. Personally, I'm expecting Discord's CEO (considering his background at McKinsey, need for blame shifting, spotting the most vulnerable person in the room) to make Huffman look like an idiot and start acting like a Redditor. There's no way Huffman manages to overcome his lack of interview experience, 20 years of Reddit brain, and decade of being the CEO responsible for everything, when needled.
JumpCrisscross
But the Twitter files!
throw310822
The twitter files were also bad. Not as bad as the stuff Trump is doing, but still bad.
sonofhans
This is one of the reasons that large-scale corporate ownership of media is very bad for citizens, and very good for oppressive governments. The FCC can make one phone call to one powerful person running one large corporate entity. If the same couple corporations own all the media (almost where we are today), it’s trivial for the government to shut down one voice.
ABC doesn’t give a shit about truth, fairness, journalism, or any such fuzzy concepts. They want short-term profits and long-term media monopolies, so cancelling one comedian or another makes no difference to them.
This is what fascism actually is — a blending of corporate and government power for the benefit of both, and against the interests of citizens.
hellcow
For a historical reference of another famous censorship, here’s the front page of the NY Times in Feb 1939, reporting that Goebbels ended the career of 5 actors for “witticisms” made about the Nazis: https://www.nytimes.com/1939/02/04/archives/goebbels-ends-ca...
josefritzishere
The most enduring quality of fascism so far is how pervasively stupid it is. I fear for the future.
Synaesthesia
We have to fight against this.
duxup
I remember in Murthy v. Missouri you had lawyers and politicans on the right arguing that even just a phone call to a reporter or social media company qualified as coercion. Even a few right wing SCOTUS judges agreed with them ...
Now we have every branch of government deployed by right wing politicians targeting individuals speech.
We have them placed as employees in news organizations, required by the government, as "bias monitors". https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-fcc-cbs-ne...
We have the government forcing media companies to sell to their cronies ...
We have the FCC chairman making threats taking issue with speech they don't like.
Trump threatening reporters with investigation because they asked a question he didn't like.
I guess they're ok with that as long as it's their people.
robertheadley
He didn't even criticize Kirk. The criticism was levied against Trump / The Republican party.
Cheer2171
Executive Order 14149 of January 20, 2025 by Donald J. Trump: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/28/2025-01...
Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Purpose. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference. Over the last 4 years, the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve. Under the guise of combatting ‘‘misinformation,’’ ‘‘disinformation,’’ and ‘‘malinformation,’’ the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate. Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to:
(a) secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech;
(b) ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen;
(c) ensure that no taxpayer resources are used to engage in or facilitate any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen; and
(d) identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.
Sec. 3. Ending Censorship of Protected Speech. (a) No Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent may act or use any Federal resources in a manner contrary to section 2 of this order.
bubbajones
[dead]
And its flagged.
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