I’m not very libertarian, and am open to criminalizing vices for policy reasons where doing so has good societal outcomes even at the expense of personal liberty. Even more importantly, I think internet platforms should be held much more accountable than they currently are for the content they host.

So I should be sympathetic to the prosecution here, and yet from the very beginning this case has seemed to be a clear cut example of a witch hunt with prosecutors engaging in bad faith tactics to try to force the defendants to plea when they haven’t committed any crime.