First, a Tweet from Glenn Greenwald, noting what I have been noticing:

Taibbi’s revelations should outrage every American. Since when is it the proper role of the U.S. Government to guide and filter conversations of Americans? Taibbi has arguably helped to reveal millions of violations of civil rights, per Bantam Books, Inc. v. Sullivan (1963). The Court’s decision was in favor of group of book publishers who sued a purportedly private “commission” created to “to educate the public concerning any book . . . or other thing containing obscene, indecent or impure language” that could corrupt youth. The Supreme Court held that through its threats of prosecution, the commission engaged in censorship. The Court further held that the commission’s actions constituted acts of the state under the Fourteenth Amendment because the commission operated “under color of state law.” The government cannot use private intermediaries to engage conduct that the government cannot do on its own due to U.S. civil rights laws.

Also consider Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., Inc., 500 U.S. 614 (1991): “Although the conduct of private parties lies beyond the Constitution’s scope in most instances, governmental authority may dominate an activity to such an extent that its participants must be deemed to act with the authority of the government and, as a result, be subject to constitutional constraints.”

Now consider this  follow-up Tweet by Elon Musk:

My thought at this moment. If we had caught merely one FBI agent meddling with a few acts of censorship at Twitter, it would have been a big deal and it would have caused much outrage. Are these disclosures too big, too many to absorb by most Americans? This overwhelming lawlessness brings to mind the quote attributed to Joseph Stalin: “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”