So the government "expressed a lot of frustration" and meta eventually agreed... And says they would make a different decision in the future, making it clear that taking down the information was a voluntary choice.

Any large organization that is subject to regulatory oversight can not simply choose to ignore the government when it expresses "a lot of frustration" and not expect retaliation.

Selective enforcement and ambiguous rules are the very effective sticks that governments use all the time against whomever doesn't fall in line.

They've made clear cases where they refused government requests. Which cases ended in some kind of enforcement? It's hard for it to be selective prosecution when none of it ended in prosecution.

> Which cases ended in some kind of enforcement?

By design there's not going to be a direct link to a refusal and the retaliation.

For example, the government has a lot of discretion with something like this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trade_Commission_v._....

You don't want to be fighting an antitrust lawsuit against an administration that has a personal vendetta against you.

There's actually a wide range of case law covering such communications in light of such perceived possibility of legal threat. A lot of it culminated in Murthy v. Missouri.

What you are suggesting is that the government cannot communicate anything of substance. If say an administration was against advertising medications and publicly said so, this could be viewed as coercing networks to not air such ads for fear of being on the wrong side of the admin.

The idea that the government could bankrupt your company isn't something that matters. What matters is if they do based on your speech or make threats to based on your speech.

Sorry but I don't follow. You're just saying that it doesn't matter legally, right? I'm not familiar with the law, but that makes sense that it would only be deemed illegal if one can show proof of retaliation.

But in practice it surely can happen that a government can try to bankrupt your company without any visible evidence of retaliation. And while you'll have no legal recourse, it obviously matters to you very much.

Basically there's a legal standard that involves a real and immediate threat. Murthy v Missouri is a good place to start:

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-411_3dq3.pdf

There's a ton of legal cases referenced from there. The current EOs against law firms would be an excellent example of real and immediate threat.

Given the severe whiplash that all the billionaires have had towards Trump, don’t assume that:

A) the Trump administration isn’t doing the exact same thing

B) the media companies are painting a totally honest picture of the kind of government pressure vs showing loyalty to Trump by supporting his narrative.