8 ms·

Jack Dorsey explains why Twitter fact-checked Trump’s false voting claims

65 points by maskedinvader 6y ago

dhhwrongagain 6y ago
What a mess. We should just return to catholic monarchy or at very least restrict voting to a trusted nobility. Democracy is really just a euphemism for rule by the media, and the media just serves private corporate interests. it’s unrealistic to trust the average layperson to make decisions on matters of state. I wouldn’t trust my cook to cut my hair.
- aaronbrethorst 6y ago
  Peter Thiel, is that you?
  - wesammikhail 6y ago
    out of curiosity: when did Thiel ever claim that we ought to do that? O.o
notadog 6y ago
Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23333504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23333504
gsibble 6y ago
"incorrect or disputed information" "This does not make us an “arbiter of truth.” " Deciding what constitutes incorrect or disputed information in a political climate absolutely does.
- dagnabbit 6y ago
  It's deeply sad that one party is now so devoted to disinformation and the destruction of democracy that they whine when somebody provides a small-print link to third party fact checkers. Such pathetic little snowflakes.
  - dang 6y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar like this. It's against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Note these, for example: "Don't be snarky." "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." You may not owe pathetic snowflakes better, but you owe this community better if you're posting here, because we're hoping not to explode: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20peace%20explode&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
    - dagnabbit 6y ago
      Sorry; I know that you work hard to ensure that HN remains a safe space for white supremacists, mysoginists, and other bigots. I hope I didn't undo your toil by briefly making one such person very slightly uncomfortable. It is clearly important to PG, sama, and you that HN be a place where hateful people with power can leverage that power, spread disinformation, and make others feel unwanted, so long as they do so using a thin veil of polite language. You do excellent work in achieving that goal.
      - dang 6y ago
        People use the same logic to accuse us of being communist agents and "totalitarian liberal thought policemen" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20438487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20438487). It always feels like the mods are against you. Please drop the denunciatory rhetoric when posting here. It is tedious and does nothing for your cause except alienate people. It's what smart readers come to HN to get away from, regardless of what they agree with politically. Everybody here disagrees with some bits and agrees with some too, but that doesn't mean they want to spend their days reading boilerplate. I think it's fair for there to be at least one place on the internet that isn't suffused with ideological copypasta. That doesn't make me a white supremacist misogynist bigot nor a totalitarian liberal thought policeman—nor a centrist milquetoast, to cover that base also.
- javagram 6y ago
  As they have left trump’s false claim up, just with a note below it, doesn’t that still leave the reader/viewer as the ultimate arbiter of truth? The reader can decide for themselves whether Trump or the other linked sources are more trustworthy.
  - eanzenberg 6y ago
    Right but then they omit links which verify his comments. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-by-mail-faulty-ballots-could-impact-elections.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-... https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/close-results-in-paterson-vote-plagued-by-fraud-claims-over-3k-ballots-seemingly-set-aside/2425813/ https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/close-results-in-pater...
    - javagram 6y ago
      Trump said that all people in CA were going to be mailed a ballot without being registered to vote. That’s objectively false. Jack’s explanation for putting a warning label on that to let people know that actually they do need to register to vote makes sense. Trump can make another tweet with those 2 links if he wants. Twitter isn’t stopping him.
- tracer4201 6y ago
  They have a civic integrity policy, per that article. That gives the leeway to decide something like misleading voters requires adding a link to the tweet but not fact checking everything every person says. What I’m saying is it’s not binary. There’s a spectrum.
- Supermancho 6y ago
  > Deciding what constitutes incorrect or disputed information in a political climate absolutely does. Absolutely not. Absolute means something and you're being hyperbolic, at best. It's the human condition to make selective decisions, including meta-decisions. It does not make you or I an arbiter of truth because we do it, nor does it make Twitter or youtube arbiters of truth. This is "equality of outcome", territory which is nonsense.
  - dang 6y ago
    > you're being obtuse No name-calling on HN, please. It's specifically against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html The more polarized things become, the more all of us here need to breathe and treat each other well.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - happytoexplain 6y ago
      This is an interesting example - I'm guessing the poster said "obtuse" where he now says "hyperbolic". While "obtuse" is definitely just an insult, literally, my experience is that it's used colloquially with an implied "deliberately" prefix to mean not "deliberately stupid/slow" but rather "deliberately avoiding some truth as a rhetorical defense". Of course, better safe than sorry.
      - dang 6y ago
        Right, it was edited that way. Commenters shouldn't edit things in ways that undermine existing replies—that's discourteous and can even be passive-aggressive. Words that imply 'deliberately' are probably best avoided in HN discussion because they're mostly a way of attacking the other person. Another common one is 'disingenuous'.
        atomi 6y ago
- ecf 6y ago
  But giving Trump a platform to lie to hundreds of millions of people is?
slg 6y ago
>Per our Civic Integrity policy, the tweets yesterday may mislead people into thinking they don’t need to register to get a ballot (only registered voters receive ballots). We’re updating the link on @realDonaldTrump’s tweet to make this more clear. That might be the worst possible answer. That isn't what people on the left found objectionable with that Tweet and specifically signalling that out isn't going to assuage the complaints coming from the right.
wahern 6y ago
We live in such strange times. The party that for decades bemoaned moral relativism has, because of its skepticism of global warming and other supposedly liberal narratives, convinced a large swath of Americans, conservative and liberal, that the truth itself is relative, or at least to pretend to believe so. That's why people are so quick to disavow being "arbiters of truth" despite that once upon a time it was assumed everyone acted as an arbiter of the truth--who would dare give their voice to non-truths? I keep returning to the notion that conservatives have become the standard bearers of radical leftist philosophies, such as poststructuralism's arguments about the non-existence of objective "truth". Republicans seem hellbent on proving this out. I've been arguing this for the better part of 20 years, though only recently did I stumble upon similar opinions, such as the satire piece, "Foreword to Newt Gingrich's Post-structuralism for Republicans: TrumpTruth and How to Make It, by Betsy DeVos, US secretary of education".
- young_unixer 6y ago
  I, for one, haven't heard conservatives use the relativist argument to oppose censorship but rather the bias with which the rules are defined and applied by Twitter et al, or similar arguments.
- wesammikhail 6y ago
  > The party that for decades bemoaned moral relativism has, because of its skepticism of global warming and other supposedly liberal narratives, convinced a large swath of Americans, conservative and liberal, that the truth itself is relative. What a naive and ignorant bundle of bull... IS fighter is a freedom fighter from the perspective of an extremist muslim. IS fighter is a terrorist from the perspective of a secular (read ~western) person. Tell me Mr. infinite wisdom, which of these two truths is the objective one? Figure that one out for me and I will worship you till the end of time because you just solved AGI. And not only are you outside of your mind with this analysis, but if you were to do it, I fail to see how in the ever living poop you can attribute it to conservatism and republicans. Last I checked the "Gender is a social construction and is not founded in objective truth" was not the R stance, it´s the D one. Edit: I love the fact that calling someone on their bullshit and lack of reflection on the notion of "objective truth" in a thread about fact checking is getting flooded with downvotes without any replies. The irony is real! /shrug
corporateslave5 6y ago
The whole fight behind voting really is political. It helps the left and it hurts the right. It’s like gerrymandering. Sure, people have the right to vote and should be able to, but that’s an intellectually dishonest way of representing changes in voting.
- Okkef 6y ago
  Of course the fight behind voting is political! But that does not mean anything is allowed in politics. It's about time Trump was seriously challenged on his lies.
  - pas 6y ago
    As long as the plurality of voters are buying shit someone is going to sell it. The GOP primary had every kinds of people and Trump won because he was the most blatant. So there's that.
- kmonsen 6y ago
  This is specifically true in the US at this moment, but it does not need to be so. The reason for this is that the GOP has less popular support (all polling on policy issues they are doing badly), but the voters they have are very dedicated and will go to much greater lengths to vote. Also votes are suppressed in specific areas which does not good in a democracy. People should be able to choose their leaders, it should not be leaders are able to choose their voters. What I mean to say is that having good voting access should not be a political issue in a democracy.
- dmurray 6y ago
  This is true about voting rights (enfranchising more voters is almost always good for the left), but gerrymandering in the US is a cross-party issue. There are plenty of examples of what the Supreme Court called "affirmative racial gerrymandering" that carve out districts to ensure more Democratic candidates get elected. Examples start at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_States#Affirmative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_S...
shibeouya 6y ago
I like Twitter, I really do. But Jack's statement make no sense. If Twitter wants to step over its bounds as a platform, then it will absolutely be scrutinized as such. What I find incredibly dishonest is that Twitter's head of "integrity" is a well-known troll who has on multiple occasions called Trump a nazi and more. How can we take their "integrity" seriously when it is led by someone with such an extreme political bias that there is no doubt this will impact what gets censored or not. IMO this is not Twitter's role and a very slippery slope.
- goatinaboat 6y ago
  who has on multiple occasions called Trump a nazi and more Regardless of what you might think about Trump it's a bad look for Twitter to have put someone so obviously partisan in that position https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/head-of-twitter-site-integrity-called-trump-white-house-officials-actual-nazis-and-mitch-mcconnell-a-bag-of-farts https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/head-of-twitter-site... They have definitely stepped over the line of "we're just a platform" and into "we are taking editorial stances on things now". Kathy Griffin, who recently called for Trump to be injected with a syringe of air, still has her account and still has her blue checkmark.
m0zg 6y ago
Here's Debbie Wasserman-Schulz in 2008 saying mail-in voting leads to fraud: https://twitter.com/M2Madness/status/1265698785813987328 https://twitter.com/M2Madness/status/1265698785813987328 Why does the entire liberal establishment (and its "free" press) insist on the non-sensical notion that mail-in voting is _less_ prone to fraud than in-person voting? The DNC doth protest too much, methinks.
- _fizz_buzz_ 6y ago
  She didn't say that you don't need to register to vote though. Also, finding a politician who says one thing today and another thing 12 years before is hardly an art. There is a whole subreddit about Trump: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrumpCriticizesTrump/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TrumpCriticizesTrump/
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Almost all voting is mail-in here. But then again, we basically have a one-person one-vote system; from the outside, it seems your "electoral college" is voter fraud on a far grander (and far more institutionalised) scale than either gerrymandering or individual bad actors. Then again, the US is strange: we can all agree that single-party states are bad, yet the US insists their two party state is somehow better than a multi-party state? (mOzg, would you mind terribly answering my question about convertible rubles in "Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession"? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23311253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23311253 спс!)
- millstone 6y ago
  The "mail-in voting is fraud" idea is a transparent attempt to disenfranchise voters who happen to live in cities and don't have 2+ hours to wait in line. Is in-person voting better? Republicans have been working to close in-person urban poll sites for years. They want to make it as hard as possible for city dwellers to vote, full stop. [1]. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/11/us-polling-sites-closed-report-supreme-court-ruling https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/11/us-polling-s...
  - m0zg 6y ago
knaik94 6y ago
From a business standpoint, being proactive about misinformation being spread is going to make them stand out as a seemingly more moral company. More people will read and engage. The perception of the feature is slightly muddied right now because the fact check is being painted as politically biased. But the bigger picture is that helping people vote and be more informed helps people of every political background. If a tweet had the wrong date for election day and twitter had fact checked that, would correcting that be wrong as well?
- scaredtobeme 6y ago
  It's exactly the opposite. People are going to cringe at their hamfisted and obviously partisan interventions and their transparently hypocritical justifications for them. I don't agree with the opposing side politically but this is a losing move. The fact that their "head of site integrity" is an extreme partisan is icing on the cake. I'm surprised to say this, as someone who despises Facebook, but Zuckerberg seems to be playing this smarter, trying desperately to appease both sides. It reminds me of a guy standing with a foot on each of two diverging trains, but at least he isn't shooting himself in the foot.
  - ben_w 6y ago
    I have to disagree with you about Facebook/Twitter comparison. To me it looks like Facebook is obliviously annoying everyone at the same time. Twitter doesn’t look great but does at least seem to be aware of this and trying to improve.
  - knaik94 6y ago
    I'm sorry, I fail to see how having a more informed electorate is a partisan issue or a "losing move". That concept implies that the party this is "against" is only successful when the voters aren't well informed. The only side twitter is against is an intentionally misinformed userbase. Twitter had already been fact-checking misinformation about covid-19 for harm reduction: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/11/21254733/twitter-covid-19-misleading-information-label-warnings-misinformation https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/11/21254733/twitter-covid-19... The political leaning of the head of site integrity is irrelevant, his job is a branch off of infosec and can be simplified to combating spam. If one person was using 10 accounts to hype up a fake cryptocurrency, the head of site integrity would be in charge of taking action to fight that. This case happens to be harm reduction in politics and not finance or health. Unfortunately there has been somewhat of a harassment campaign against the head of site integrity because people continue to misunderstand his role. Facebook is currently synonymous with fake news. I think that in the long term, people will stop trust it completely, similar to how they've learn to avoid clickbait titles on articles.
occasionopinion 6y ago
The initial warning label should have been simple and kept to objectively defensible claims. "Donald Trump said people in California do not need to register to receive a ballot. This is false. See $governmentSite for further information". It was a mistake to use media organizations with partisan opinion sections as fact-checkers. The most important people to reach with that warning label are the most likely to dismiss any information from those media organizations. A warning label is useless without trust. But, I am optimistic about Twitter's use of fact-checking. I've watched both sides of the political spectrum slip deeper and deeper into delusion, and this is one of the few glimmers of hope. Twitter has the platform, the reach, and the power to effect legitimate positive change. I feel increasingly every day that the truth is slipping between our fingers. This feels like one of our few chances to realistically combat misinformation. I meet people from both sides of the political aisle who have incredible blind spots. People who actively follow politics and yet often have never encountered basic counter-arguments to their narratives. The modern media landscape allows people to live ensconced in an information bubble. Twitter is the most bipartisan platform that exists, and thus in the prime position to pop those bubbles. I appreciate that Twitter is attempting this step. This has almost no likelihood of increasing users and a strong likelihood of decreasing users. They have chosen to do something that will likely hurt their bottom line out of conscience.
- loopz 6y ago
  Social media platforms have been working to minimize effects of false news for several years now, and such measures are expected by politicians and the public.
RickJWagner 6y ago
It's a dangerous precedent. When a Democrat is in office, will Twitter appoint a rabid conservative to make the fact checks? Because it seems the current "Head of Site Integrity" has a long history of making incendiary opinionated posts against Republicans, rural states, etc. Fairness should matter in the media. Without it, we're on a bad path.
- FreedomThinker 6y ago
  >Because it seems the current "Head of Site Integrity" has a long history of making incendiary opinionated posts against Republicans, rural states, etc. The Head of Site Integrity also make hateful comments against tyrannies. I don't know why anyone would want this person to be in charge of integrity.

65 points by maskedinvader 6y ago

What a mess. We should just return to catholic monarchy or at very least restrict voting to a trusted nobility. Democracy is really just a euphemism for rule by the media, and the media just serves private corporate interests. it’s unrealistic to trust the average layperson to make decisions on matters of state. I wouldn’t trust my cook to cut my hair.

aaronbrethorst 6y ago
Peter Thiel, is that you?
- wesammikhail 6y ago
  out of curiosity: when did Thiel ever claim that we ought to do that? O.o

notadog 6y ago

Duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23333504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23333504

gsibble 6y ago

"incorrect or disputed information" "This does not make us an “arbiter of truth.” " Deciding what constitutes incorrect or disputed information in a political climate absolutely does.

dagnabbit 6y ago
It's deeply sad that one party is now so devoted to disinformation and the destruction of democracy that they whine when somebody provides a small-print link to third party fact checkers. Such pathetic little snowflakes.
- dang 6y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar like this. It's against the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). Note these, for example: "Don't be snarky." "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." You may not owe pathetic snowflakes better, but you owe this community better if you're posting here, because we're hoping not to explode: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20peace%20explode&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que....
  - dagnabbit 6y ago
    Sorry; I know that you work hard to ensure that HN remains a safe space for white supremacists, mysoginists, and other bigots. I hope I didn't undo your toil by briefly making one such person very slightly uncomfortable. It is clearly important to PG, sama, and you that HN be a place where hateful people with power can leverage that power, spread disinformation, and make others feel unwanted, so long as they do so using a thin veil of polite language. You do excellent work in achieving that goal.
    - dang 6y ago
      People use the same logic to accuse us of being communist agents and "totalitarian liberal thought policemen" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20438487 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20438487). It always feels like the mods are against you. Please drop the denunciatory rhetoric when posting here. It is tedious and does nothing for your cause except alienate people. It's what smart readers come to HN to get away from, regardless of what they agree with politically. Everybody here disagrees with some bits and agrees with some too, but that doesn't mean they want to spend their days reading boilerplate. I think it's fair for there to be at least one place on the internet that isn't suffused with ideological copypasta. That doesn't make me a white supremacist misogynist bigot nor a totalitarian liberal thought policeman—nor a centrist milquetoast, to cover that base also.
javagram 6y ago
As they have left trump’s false claim up, just with a note below it, doesn’t that still leave the reader/viewer as the ultimate arbiter of truth? The reader can decide for themselves whether Trump or the other linked sources are more trustworthy.
- eanzenberg 6y ago
  Right but then they omit links which verify his comments. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-by-mail-faulty-ballots-could-impact-elections.html https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/07/us/politics/as-more-vote-... https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/close-results-in-paterson-vote-plagued-by-fraud-claims-over-3k-ballots-seemingly-set-aside/2425813/ https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/close-results-in-pater...
  - javagram 6y ago
    Trump said that all people in CA were going to be mailed a ballot without being registered to vote. That’s objectively false. Jack’s explanation for putting a warning label on that to let people know that actually they do need to register to vote makes sense. Trump can make another tweet with those 2 links if he wants. Twitter isn’t stopping him.
tracer4201 6y ago
They have a civic integrity policy, per that article. That gives the leeway to decide something like misleading voters requires adding a link to the tweet but not fact checking everything every person says. What I’m saying is it’s not binary. There’s a spectrum.
Supermancho 6y ago
> Deciding what constitutes incorrect or disputed information in a political climate absolutely does. Absolutely not. Absolute means something and you're being hyperbolic, at best. It's the human condition to make selective decisions, including meta-decisions. It does not make you or I an arbiter of truth because we do it, nor does it make Twitter or youtube arbiters of truth. This is "equality of outcome", territory which is nonsense.
- dang 6y ago
  > you're being obtuse No name-calling on HN, please. It's specifically against the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html The more polarized things become, the more all of us here need to breathe and treat each other well.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - happytoexplain 6y ago
    This is an interesting example - I'm guessing the poster said "obtuse" where he now says "hyperbolic". While "obtuse" is definitely just an insult, literally, my experience is that it's used colloquially with an implied "deliberately" prefix to mean not "deliberately stupid/slow" but rather "deliberately avoiding some truth as a rhetorical defense". Of course, better safe than sorry.
    - dang 6y ago
      Right, it was edited that way. Commenters shouldn't edit things in ways that undermine existing replies—that's discourteous and can even be passive-aggressive. Words that imply 'deliberately' are probably best avoided in HN discussion because they're mostly a way of attacking the other person. Another common one is 'disingenuous'.
      - atomi 6y ago
ecf 6y ago
But giving Trump a platform to lie to hundreds of millions of people is?

slg 6y ago

>Per our Civic Integrity policy, the tweets yesterday may mislead people into thinking they don’t need to register to get a ballot (only registered voters receive ballots). We’re updating the link on @realDonaldTrump’s tweet to make this more clear. That might be the worst possible answer. That isn't what people on the left found objectionable with that Tweet and specifically signalling that out isn't going to assuage the complaints coming from the right.

wahern 6y ago

We live in such strange times. The party that for decades bemoaned moral relativism has, because of its skepticism of global warming and other supposedly liberal narratives, convinced a large swath of Americans, conservative and liberal, that the truth itself is relative, or at least to pretend to believe so. That's why people are so quick to disavow being "arbiters of truth" despite that once upon a time it was assumed everyone acted as an arbiter of the truth--who would dare give their voice to non-truths? I keep returning to the notion that conservatives have become the standard bearers of radical leftist philosophies, such as poststructuralism's arguments about the non-existence of objective "truth". Republicans seem hellbent on proving this out. I've been arguing this for the better part of 20 years, though only recently did I stumble upon similar opinions, such as the satire piece, "Foreword to Newt Gingrich's Post-structuralism for Republicans: TrumpTruth and How to Make It, by Betsy DeVos, US secretary of education".

young_unixer 6y ago
I, for one, haven't heard conservatives use the relativist argument to oppose censorship but rather the bias with which the rules are defined and applied by Twitter et al, or similar arguments.
wesammikhail 6y ago
> The party that for decades bemoaned moral relativism has, because of its skepticism of global warming and other supposedly liberal narratives, convinced a large swath of Americans, conservative and liberal, that the truth itself is relative. What a naive and ignorant bundle of bull... IS fighter is a freedom fighter from the perspective of an extremist muslim. IS fighter is a terrorist from the perspective of a secular (read ~western) person. Tell me Mr. infinite wisdom, which of these two truths is the objective one? Figure that one out for me and I will worship you till the end of time because you just solved AGI. And not only are you outside of your mind with this analysis, but if you were to do it, I fail to see how in the ever living poop you can attribute it to conservatism and republicans. Last I checked the "Gender is a social construction and is not founded in objective truth" was not the R stance, it´s the D one. Edit: I love the fact that calling someone on their bullshit and lack of reflection on the notion of "objective truth" in a thread about fact checking is getting flooded with downvotes without any replies. The irony is real! /shrug

corporateslave5 6y ago

The whole fight behind voting really is political. It helps the left and it hurts the right. It’s like gerrymandering. Sure, people have the right to vote and should be able to, but that’s an intellectually dishonest way of representing changes in voting.

Okkef 6y ago
Of course the fight behind voting is political! But that does not mean anything is allowed in politics. It's about time Trump was seriously challenged on his lies.
- pas 6y ago
  As long as the plurality of voters are buying shit someone is going to sell it. The GOP primary had every kinds of people and Trump won because he was the most blatant. So there's that.
kmonsen 6y ago
This is specifically true in the US at this moment, but it does not need to be so. The reason for this is that the GOP has less popular support (all polling on policy issues they are doing badly), but the voters they have are very dedicated and will go to much greater lengths to vote. Also votes are suppressed in specific areas which does not good in a democracy. People should be able to choose their leaders, it should not be leaders are able to choose their voters. What I mean to say is that having good voting access should not be a political issue in a democracy.
dmurray 6y ago
This is true about voting rights (enfranchising more voters is almost always good for the left), but gerrymandering in the US is a cross-party issue. There are plenty of examples of what the Supreme Court called "affirmative racial gerrymandering" that carve out districts to ensure more Democratic candidates get elected. Examples start at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_States#Affirmative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_S...

shibeouya 6y ago

I like Twitter, I really do. But Jack's statement make no sense. If Twitter wants to step over its bounds as a platform, then it will absolutely be scrutinized as such. What I find incredibly dishonest is that Twitter's head of "integrity" is a well-known troll who has on multiple occasions called Trump a nazi and more. How can we take their "integrity" seriously when it is led by someone with such an extreme political bias that there is no doubt this will impact what gets censored or not. IMO this is not Twitter's role and a very slippery slope.

goatinaboat 6y ago
who has on multiple occasions called Trump a nazi and more Regardless of what you might think about Trump it's a bad look for Twitter to have put someone so obviously partisan in that position https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/head-of-twitter-site-integrity-called-trump-white-house-officials-actual-nazis-and-mitch-mcconnell-a-bag-of-farts https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/head-of-twitter-site... They have definitely stepped over the line of "we're just a platform" and into "we are taking editorial stances on things now". Kathy Griffin, who recently called for Trump to be injected with a syringe of air, still has her account and still has her blue checkmark.

m0zg 6y ago

Here's Debbie Wasserman-Schulz in 2008 saying mail-in voting leads to fraud: https://twitter.com/M2Madness/status/1265698785813987328 https://twitter.com/M2Madness/status/1265698785813987328 Why does the entire liberal establishment (and its "free" press) insist on the non-sensical notion that mail-in voting is _less_ prone to fraud than in-person voting? The DNC doth protest too much, methinks.

_fizz_buzz_ 6y ago
She didn't say that you don't need to register to vote though. Also, finding a politician who says one thing today and another thing 12 years before is hardly an art. There is a whole subreddit about Trump: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrumpCriticizesTrump/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TrumpCriticizesTrump/
082349872349872 6y ago
Almost all voting is mail-in here. But then again, we basically have a one-person one-vote system; from the outside, it seems your "electoral college" is voter fraud on a far grander (and far more institutionalised) scale than either gerrymandering or individual bad actors. Then again, the US is strange: we can all agree that single-party states are bad, yet the US insists their two party state is somehow better than a multi-party state? (mOzg, would you mind terribly answering my question about convertible rubles in "Ivan Vasilievich Changes Profession"? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23311253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23311253 спс!)
millstone 6y ago
The "mail-in voting is fraud" idea is a transparent attempt to disenfranchise voters who happen to live in cities and don't have 2+ hours to wait in line. Is in-person voting better? Republicans have been working to close in-person urban poll sites for years. They want to make it as hard as possible for city dwellers to vote, full stop. [1]. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/11/us-polling-sites-closed-report-supreme-court-ruling https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/sep/11/us-polling-s...
- m0zg 6y ago

knaik94 6y ago

From a business standpoint, being proactive about misinformation being spread is going to make them stand out as a seemingly more moral company. More people will read and engage. The perception of the feature is slightly muddied right now because the fact check is being painted as politically biased. But the bigger picture is that helping people vote and be more informed helps people of every political background. If a tweet had the wrong date for election day and twitter had fact checked that, would correcting that be wrong as well?

scaredtobeme 6y ago
It's exactly the opposite. People are going to cringe at their hamfisted and obviously partisan interventions and their transparently hypocritical justifications for them. I don't agree with the opposing side politically but this is a losing move. The fact that their "head of site integrity" is an extreme partisan is icing on the cake. I'm surprised to say this, as someone who despises Facebook, but Zuckerberg seems to be playing this smarter, trying desperately to appease both sides. It reminds me of a guy standing with a foot on each of two diverging trains, but at least he isn't shooting himself in the foot.
- ben_w 6y ago
  I have to disagree with you about Facebook/Twitter comparison. To me it looks like Facebook is obliviously annoying everyone at the same time. Twitter doesn’t look great but does at least seem to be aware of this and trying to improve.
- knaik94 6y ago
  I'm sorry, I fail to see how having a more informed electorate is a partisan issue or a "losing move". That concept implies that the party this is "against" is only successful when the voters aren't well informed. The only side twitter is against is an intentionally misinformed userbase. Twitter had already been fact-checking misinformation about covid-19 for harm reduction: https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/11/21254733/twitter-covid-19-misleading-information-label-warnings-misinformation https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/11/21254733/twitter-covid-19... The political leaning of the head of site integrity is irrelevant, his job is a branch off of infosec and can be simplified to combating spam. If one person was using 10 accounts to hype up a fake cryptocurrency, the head of site integrity would be in charge of taking action to fight that. This case happens to be harm reduction in politics and not finance or health. Unfortunately there has been somewhat of a harassment campaign against the head of site integrity because people continue to misunderstand his role. Facebook is currently synonymous with fake news. I think that in the long term, people will stop trust it completely, similar to how they've learn to avoid clickbait titles on articles.

occasionopinion 6y ago

The initial warning label should have been simple and kept to objectively defensible claims. "Donald Trump said people in California do not need to register to receive a ballot. This is false. See $governmentSite for further information". It was a mistake to use media organizations with partisan opinion sections as fact-checkers. The most important people to reach with that warning label are the most likely to dismiss any information from those media organizations. A warning label is useless without trust. But, I am optimistic about Twitter's use of fact-checking. I've watched both sides of the political spectrum slip deeper and deeper into delusion, and this is one of the few glimmers of hope. Twitter has the platform, the reach, and the power to effect legitimate positive change. I feel increasingly every day that the truth is slipping between our fingers. This feels like one of our few chances to realistically combat misinformation. I meet people from both sides of the political aisle who have incredible blind spots. People who actively follow politics and yet often have never encountered basic counter-arguments to their narratives. The modern media landscape allows people to live ensconced in an information bubble. Twitter is the most bipartisan platform that exists, and thus in the prime position to pop those bubbles. I appreciate that Twitter is attempting this step. This has almost no likelihood of increasing users and a strong likelihood of decreasing users. They have chosen to do something that will likely hurt their bottom line out of conscience.

loopz 6y ago
Social media platforms have been working to minimize effects of false news for several years now, and such measures are expected by politicians and the public.

RickJWagner 6y ago

It's a dangerous precedent. When a Democrat is in office, will Twitter appoint a rabid conservative to make the fact checks? Because it seems the current "Head of Site Integrity" has a long history of making incendiary opinionated posts against Republicans, rural states, etc. Fairness should matter in the media. Without it, we're on a bad path.

FreedomThinker 6y ago
>Because it seems the current "Head of Site Integrity" has a long history of making incendiary opinionated posts against Republicans, rural states, etc. The Head of Site Integrity also make hateful comments against tyrannies. I don't know why anyone would want this person to be in charge of integrity.