The fact that there’s a system which allows the government to directly request take-downs of content is in and out of itself a violation of the 1st to me. Social media companies are private entities and they have a right to moderate their sites however they please, but it’s not supposed to function under duress. There’s an imbalance of power here, an implication of consequences if a story “reported” by the government isn’t “handled” accordingly. There’s no reason for such a system to exist other than to bury stories - it benefits the government and does nothing for the site - CDA 230 shields them from liability for user-generated content, so even if a post contains information that could be construed as illegal, the party that bears liability is the user.
Imagine for a moment that we’re not taking about social media - imagine we’re talking about the press. Imagine that such a system existed just a few decades ago - a system to suppress any information the government deems inconvenient. We’d never see the Pentagon Papers, we’d never hear about Watergate, we wouldn’t even imagine that PRISM was a thing. As it stands, social media are the modern public square - it’s where information is being shared and discussed. If the government can tinker with that square through thinly-veiled “threats”, it’s not free or public anymore.
I don’t like it. I didn’t like it before the Twitter Papers and I don’t like it now. I didn’t like when Biden’s admin was using this system and I didn’t like when Trump’s did the same, albeit with significantly less success (their bias is showing pretty badly here). These “portals” need to be dismantled, more people should be outraged by their existence, but for whatever reason most are interested in the specific content being suppressed rather than the core issue, the fact that a suppression mechanism exists at all.