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Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting

• dddddaviddddd 6y ago
  Context: https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-cites-hacked-materials-policy-194403160.html https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-cites-hacked-materials-policy... https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-post-hunter-joe-biden-giuliani-red-flags-disinformation-2020-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-post-hunter-joe-bid...
• Plough_Jogger 6y ago
  The article in question can be found here: https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/ https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden...
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • tootie 6y ago
    What a bizarre story. Unidentified person drops off a damaged computer at a repair shop and never comes back. Hard drive contains lots of salacious info about Hunter Biden. Repair shop decides the correct course of action is to give it to Rudy Giuliani. That is fishy as hell.
    • croissants 6y ago
      Why is this being downvoted? As far as I can tell from reading the article, this is an accurate summary. The provided evidence that said laptop is genuinely connected with Hunter Biden is 1) a Biden sticker on the laptop, 2) the fact that it's a Delaware repair shop, and 3) a pornographic video featuring somebody who "appears to be" Hunter Biden. What about this is convincing evidence?
      • tootie 6y ago
        They're also declaring a "smoking gun" of Hunter peddling influence when the only data point is an email from a Ukrainian to Hunter saying that he was looking forward to meeting the Vice President. There doesn't seem to be any message from Hunter, and Joe has already said his official schedule is public record and no meeting ever happened.
        • remarkEon 6y ago
          What's amusing about this whole thing to me is that Facebook and Twitter dropping the ban hammer on this piece will Streisand the hell out of it. If they'd left it alone, it would've been lost in the news cycle with everything else going on and no one would remember it in a week. Now the story is, once again, "Big Tech censors conservatives".
          • mullingitover 6y ago
            It's already lost in the news cycle. Not trending on twitter. Impotently reverberating on Parler.
            • remarkEon 6y ago
              Sure is for me, multiple variations of it. I'm not signed in (don't have an account), and am in a private window on firefox w/ cookies cleared.
              • mullingitover 6y ago
                Twitter is dominated by SC hearings and baseball, Google News is SC hearings and Barron Trump having covid, and other random stuff like rabid enthusiasm for early voting below the fold. I'm not seeing a single reference to this story on either of those sites headlines, and I'm also in an incognito window. This thing didn't even survive the first half of the day.
            • aksss 6y ago
    • donmcronald 6y ago
      > Steve Bannon, former adviser to President Trump, told The Post about the existence of the hard drive in late September and Giuliani provided The Post with a copy of it on Sunday. I want to see the raw emails.
      • busterarm 6y ago
        So your theory is that the emails are fake...what about the video of Hunter smoking crack?
        • tootie 6y ago
          It is well know that Hunter had a drug problem. It came up in the last debate.
          • busterarm 6y ago
            But the video comes from the same laptop...
            • donmcronald 6y ago
              It’s unlikely that video was taken with the laptop. Who copies a video of themself smoking crack onto a laptop and drops it off at a repair shop?
              • erichocean 6y ago
                Crack addicts? Hunter is not the brightest bulb in the Biden family tree…
        • donmcronald 6y ago
          I said I want to see the raw emails. That would be enough to determine if it’s purely made up or if _someone_ actually sent those emails. Raw emails would provide a lot of extra information for almost no effort. I didn’t see the video. Was it published?
  • nautilus12 6y ago
    What...you mean hacker news isn't censoring it yet??
  • esotericimpl 6y ago
    It’s funny cause the nypost is about to get sued out of existence. Why was the pdf created in 2019? If the emails were supposedly found now and turned into a pdf for distribution. It’s almost as if Rudy Giuliani is terrible at committing crimes like he’s been doing for the past 4 years.
    • burgerzzz 6y ago
      The emails weren't supposedly found now though. Did you read the article?
• creaghpatr 6y ago
  They also locked the NY Post's Twitter account https://twitter.com/noahmanskar/status/1316459416414302208?s=20 https://twitter.com/noahmanskar/status/1316459416414302208?s...
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
    • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
      The NY Post editor is Sohrab Ahmari, and his account https://twitter.com/SohrabAhmari https://twitter.com/SohrabAhmari remains unsuspended.
      • MisterBastahrd 6y ago
        Sohrab is a conspiracy theorist nutball who fled a religious dictatorship in Iran and now openly advocates for a Christian monarchy for the US.
        • remarkEon 6y ago
          LOL I read Sohrab pretty regularly but have not seen him advocate for a Christian Monarchy in the US (though would love to read that piece). He had a pretty big dust-up with David French over, among other things, whether conservatives should continue being nice to the left as a sort of game theoretical experiment. Other than that, he's kind of boring.
  • esotericimpl 6y ago
    They posted 3 hours ago.
    • pseudo0 6y ago
      Often Twitter will lock the creation of new tweets, and require the manual deletion of the offending tweet before you can continue posting. I suspect that's what happened in this case, rather than an outright account suspension.
• jimbob45 6y ago
  Can anyone with a Twitter confirm this is happening? I assume Twitter will stop censoring it once this goes viral. Edit: Politics entirely aside. We need the truth on Twitter’s actions before we lose the chance.
  • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    It's happening to me, although I heard from a friend that a few people can still post the link for some reason. I get an error message saying the link is banned when I try to tweet it myself, and an interstitial warning me it's unsafe when I click on any existing link to it.
  • throwawa3495 6y ago
    can confirm, it's still happening as of right now for the following url: https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/ https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden...
  • dilap 6y ago
    Yeah, I just tried it, I got: > We can't complete this request because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful. Visit our Help Center to learn more. NPR reporter: > From Twitter spox: "In line with our Hacked Materials Policy, as well as our approach to blocking URLs, we are taking action to block any links to or images of the material in question on Twitter." https://twitter.com/shannonpareil/status/1316452038465724417 https://twitter.com/shannonpareil/status/1316452038465724417 Which is completely nonsense as a reason; you can, to use just one of a million examples, freely post this story on twitter: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-tru... Facebook is also suppressing the story. Quite remarkable.
    • fernandotakai 6y ago
      >> From Twitter spox: "In line with our Hacked Materials Policy, as well as our approach to blocking URLs, we are taking action to block any links to or images of the material in question on Twitter." that's a huge lie. the brazilian version of the intercept got actual hacked info from federal judges/prosecutor's cellphones and twitter did absolutely nothing -- hell, it was on our trending topics for weeks (search for "vaza jato"). we know it was hacked because brazil's federal police got the hackers. seems like twitter really loves to pick-and-choose when to apply their hacked material policy.
• Hamuko 6y ago
  >corruption by a major-party presidential candidate, Biden. I thought this was a Hunter Biden story?
  • djsumdog 6y ago
    The story involves Hunter and his father and alleged family corruption.
• gjsman-1000 6y ago
  Whatever your perspective, directly verifiable censorship like this is just begging for legal trouble and monopoly investigations. Tactically speaking, I would say this is a massive mistake from Twitter.
  • koolba 6y ago
    Technically Facebook did it first: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24778053 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24778053
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • tootie 6y ago
    This is what I don't get. People are screaming for digital channels to not allow disinformation even though they are just a passive communication channel. Is anyone screaming at printing presses for printing the NY Post? It's a garbage publication and this information is at least suspicious, but why are we holding Twitter to such a high standard of integrity and not actually journalists?
    • joshuamorton 6y ago
      > Is anyone screaming at printing presses for printing the NY Post? You...you mean screaming at the NY post for printing itself? Yes, people do that constantly.
      • tootie 6y ago
        Hahaha. You're not wrong.
    • hackinthebochs 6y ago
      Social media isn't a "passive communication channel", not when likes and algorithms magnify the reach of content.
    • 6y ago
• leoh 6y ago
  Yikes, Streisand effect here
• icpmacdo 6y ago
  They are also censoring it being sent in direct messages. This is probably the most farcical gift tech has ever given the GOP
  • im3w1l 6y ago
    At a moment where people are scared of meeting to discuss things in person. Which makes it orders of magnitudes worse. This is the only voice people had.
• rmrfstar 6y ago
  Robert Graham [1] pointed out that if the emails are authentic, they can be trivially verified via DKIM. That the email metadata was not released implies the emails are either inauthentic, or that the post did not contact someone with basic competence in computer forensics. Either possibility seriously undercuts the article's credibility. [1] https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/1316407424648179717 https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/1316407424648179717
  • throwawa3495 6y ago
    it's honestly irrelevant about the credibility of the emails and other data at this point, its the blanket censorship of this article that's now the real story.
    • Hamuko 6y ago
      Is it? Because the factuality of the story seems like a pretty big deal here. If it's completely bogus, how is it different from any of those Russian trollfarm posts that the US government was worried about?
      • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        It's different because it was written by a major American newspaper. Twitter should not be exercising editorial control over the news.
        • Hamuko 6y ago
          Isn't it distribution control rather than editorial control?
          • koolba 6y ago
            Limiting distribution to filter out what you don't want to rise to the top has the same effect as explicitly picking winners. Think of it like shooting the tires of all the cars you want to lose in a race. Sure you didn't push the winner across the finish line, but you made it damn near impossible for anyone else to even get there.
• throwawa3495 6y ago
  weird that there is actually no mention of these materials being hacked from anywhere though, or did I miss that? It seems like this computer shop fellow voluntarily gave over this hard drive only after the computer in question became his property (as a result of someone not collecting the computer and not paying the bill) LOL now this post has been flagged wtfff
  • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    It's worth noting that HN flags are user-sourced, so unlike on Twitter that doesn't necessarily reflect administrators stepping in to kill the discussion.
    • throwawa3495 6y ago
      yes fair, was only suggesting that this controversy kind of feeds on itself and will keep growing.
  • likeafox 6y ago
    >It seems like this computer shop fellow voluntarily gave over this hard drive only after the computer in question became his property (as a result of someone not collecting the computer and not paying the bill) To say this strains credulity would be be a massive understatement.
    • throwawa3495 6y ago
      wait though, bc i really dont see it in any of these articles: who has been hacked?
      • srtjstjsj 6y ago
        The NY Post claims Hunter Biden's or one of his associates' laptops was hacked.
        • svrb 6y ago
• the_only_law 6y ago
  Interestingly they failed to stop discussion of it from becoming a top trending item.
  • Plough_Jogger 6y ago
    Also interesting that they provided a dedicated summary of the topic for the related trending hashtag https://twitter.com/search?q=%23HunterBiden&src=trend_click&vertical=trends https://twitter.com/search?q=%23HunterBiden&src=trend_click&...
• benmmurphy 6y ago
  I think it is crazy that twitter has gone down this path. Being the arbiter of truth makes their job much harder and doesn’t seem to have a big upside. If they have an agenda they want to push the upside might be there but otherwise it’s just a perpetual shitshow.
  • ojnabieoot 6y ago
    I mean, their previous path was "it's fine for us to profit handsomely from dishonest propaganda since we're not personally responsible for it, even if that propaganda gets implicated in the theft of an election or a genocide campaign." This turns out to have its own issues! And it's not specifically about a leftist/progressive agenda: it is plain unethical to profit off propaganda which you know to be deceitful and dangerous, regardless of what political intent. While it is true that Twitter has cracked the whip against the right far more than the left since they started regulation of misinformation, this is reflective of Twitter being unbiased - the problem is the 21st-century Western right.
  • quest88 6y ago
    It's not as crazy if you think of all the people who yell "Something should be done about big tech enabling the spread of false information!!!!!".
    • 3minus1 6y ago
      It's not only that. In the Social Dilemma they basically say Facebook/Youtube/etc promote disinformation because it increases engagement/money
  • jim-jim-jim 6y ago
    It has a clear upside. I don't think it's a secret at this point that the values of Silicon Valley are in sync with those of the right wing of the Democratic party. These companies are acting in their self interest. We can make appeals to the ideal of free speech or point out instances of hypocrisy all we want, but it's a futile and demoralizing thing to focus on. It probably makes more sense to view Facebook and Twitter as media outlets with their own editorial agendas, just like the Washington Post, Economist, Daily Mail, etc. And then disengage if their agenda is at odds with yours.
• mizzack 6y ago
  not coincidentally on trending: Streisand Effect
• ogre_codes 6y ago
  I'm struggling to see how this story is evidence of anything. Steve Bannon—one of Trump's chief cronies—provided a mixed bag of allegedly stolen content from a laptop with some easily contrived "evidence" against Biden and Trump. There don't seem to be any direct ties even to Hunter Biden, let alone his dad. Publishing this is a gift to Trump. History may not repeat itself, but it sure rhymes.
• bgorman 6y ago
  The fact that this article is flagged is alarming. This is a relevant news story directly related to how technology companies influence public perception. Like it or not, the New York Post is a widely distributed newspaper in the US. Once the precedent for censoring a newspaper has been established there is nothing stopping facebook for censoring more "upscale" conservative newspapers like the WaLl Street Journal or the Financial Times.
  • collective-intl 6y ago
    +1 I don't know why you are being downvoted, I think HN's flagging system is another way we are being censored. Just this summer, I remember multiple articles with important, true contributions to our understanding of covid that got flagged. We are losing the ability to consider multiple sides of an issue.
    • holler 6y ago
      I can't comment on their system, and as a long-time HN user overall I find it a great place to have discussion on varied topics. That said, I'm working on a new alternative site and welcome you to check it out. It's called sqwok.im and it's a sort of hybrid between Twitter & Slack/Discord, where each post has a chatroom instead of a comment thread. In beta mode and welcome feedback.
    • throwaway4715 6y ago
      Parent might be flagged because Facebook didn't censor anything. Twitter did.
      • dx87 6y ago
        > Twitter’s actions came after Facebook announced it would limit the sharing of the story while fact-checkers reviewed the piece. The link says Facebook did censor it.
    • cmdshiftf4 6y ago
      >We are losing the ability to consider multiple sides of an issue Seems to be long gone, to be honest. We're now at a point where people are de-humanizing those on a different side of an issue to themselves. We unfortunately know what the next step is.
• yalogin 6y ago
  I don't know how I feel about it given how blatantly the current administration lies and the lengths they are willing to go to manufacture lies. Given that scenario, should we not just assume that everything they say is a lie until proven otherwise?
  • bgorman 6y ago
    There is a lot of circumstantial evidence here. Why would Hunter biden be paid thousands of dollars a month to work at a random Ukrainian energy company other than to provide access to Joe Biden. Hunter Biden has no expertise running a energy utility.
    • croissants 6y ago
      Isn't the likeliest explanation that 1) random Ukrainian energy company paid Hunter Biden for access to Joe Biden, and 2) the payments were not useful in actually getting access to Joe Biden? "Thousands of dollars a month" doesn't seem like "get close to a former VP/future presidential candidate" money. (Of course, this explanation isn't exactly a good look either, but at this point it's a choice between imperfection options, and one seems a lot less imperfect.)
      • luckylion 6y ago
        Do companies pay princelings large sums of money without getting anything in return? I believe it's usually understood that they get something in return, even if that something is just not getting into trouble (as is the way in China, if you want no road blocks in your enterprise, you better hire some high official's kid).
        • ceejayoz 6y ago
          Trying it and having it be successful in obtaining the desired access are very different things, though.
  • oyra 6y ago
• djsumdog 6y ago
  Facebook, Twitter, Reddit et. al. are now in Orwell's land of "Ministry of Truth" .. they are telling the people what is reliable "news" and what is not. It's getting pretty insane out there.
  • WalterGR 6y ago
    No. The Ministry of Truth and the protagonist of 1984, it’s employee, were engaged in revising the written record to make it match what the Party wanted in the present. They were also the only source of information. Twitter is not doing the former and isn’t the latter, so equating it with Minitrue is 100% factually incorrect.
    • djsumdog 6y ago
      Sure not everything matches up. The Ministry of Truth was government, but in America the same type of group exists and it's private. They don't have to rewrite history. They're rewriting the present.
      • WalterGR 6y ago
        They're rewriting the present. That’s typically referred to, at its most specific: fact checking, less specifically: news reporting, and most generally: making a claim of fact... when one disagrees with the check, report, or claim.
      • jcadam 6y ago
        > America the same type of group exists and it's private You gotta admire the genius of it all. The state gets to control speech and the press via willing private citizens and corporations, whilst keeping its hands clean.
        • srtjstjsj 6y ago
          The OP is literally about Twitter refusing to publishing The State's propaganda, and The State complaining about it.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 6y ago
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• hirundo 6y ago
  There's a recurring argument on social media censorship that goes: "you wouldn't want the telephone company censoring phone conversations would you?" And the response is along the lines: "these are hardly private conversations, any tweet can go viral and be seen by millions". This story breaks that mold in that it involves social media censoring private conversations via DM. If you think that's OK for Twitter on its platform, is it also OK for AT&T on its phone network? For Google on Gmail?
  • kube-system 6y ago
    I really hope AT&T starts censoring these damn spam calls. I've had 5 today.
    • ianai 6y ago
      They can’t. Because that actually is a technology not built to be moderated.
      • kube-system 6y ago
        Not yet, at least. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIR/SHAKEN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STIR/SHAKEN
      • bigbubba 6y ago
        If they had to give me five dollars for every spam call that got through, I bet they'd find a way to stop it. T-mobile already classifies these calls as 'Scam likely' and they've never seemed to misclassify any, so obviously it can be done.
        • ars 6y ago
          > and they've never seemed to misclassify any They do, my local politician robo-calls all his constituents with info, and T-Mobile always flags his calls as spam. I guess in a way it's spam since it's unsolicited? But it's real info, and relevant to the local people he's calling, and keeping people informed is part of his job.
• dang 6y ago
  We changed the URL from https://twitter.com/sohrabahmari/status/1316446749729398790 https://twitter.com/sohrabahmari/status/1316446749729398790 to an article with more information. If there's a more informative source, we can change it again. Edit: I've changed it from https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/facebook-twitter-block-the-post-from-posting/ https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/facebook-twitter-block-the-pos... to what looks like it may be a more neutral source. Other users have supplied these related links: https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-post-hunter-joe-biden-giuliani-red-flags-disinformation-2020-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-post-hunter-joe-bid... https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/ https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden...
  • pseudo0 6y ago
    The Yahoo article that you've linked appears to be a republication of an article from the National Review (https://www.nationalreview.com/news/twitter-cites-hacked-materials-policy-to-justify-censorship-of-ny-post-hunter-biden-article/ https://www.nationalreview.com/news/twitter-cites-hacked-mat...). Perhaps it would make more sense to link to the original source?
    • dang 6y ago
      Ok, changed to that from https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-cites-hacked-materials-policy-194403160.html https://news.yahoo.com/twitter-cites-hacked-materials-policy.... Thanks!
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
  • dionian 6y ago
    Thanks for the transparency. I sincerely mean it
  • chillee 6y ago
    One issue now is that the title mentions Facebook but the linked article does not, which is somewhat confusing.
• troughway 6y ago
  Much like the HN thread that applauded FB getting rid of some thousands of accounts related to “right wingers”, QAnon, et cetera, I equally applaud this admirable move. I hope that FB, Twitter, Google, Cloudflare and others continue to block and close accounts to prevent the intervention of democracy as much as possible. A similar case to this may have been the reason why Hillary Clinton lost the presidential election in 2016. So these are all parties who are trying to right the wrongs here done by destructive state actors from abroad. These are all companies who own the servers that this content sits on, and it’s well within their rights to get rid of it if and when they wish to. If you don’t want your content removed from there, then don’t post there and don’t use their services. Simple as that.
  • partiallypro 6y ago
    Right, but what if the story is 100% legit, and the people interfering in democracy are actually FB, Twitter, Google and Cloudflare? All of which are heavy lobbyists, and have their own interests at heart. Shouldn't they just be elevating journalists that are casting doubts on it, or going in to try to confirm or refute the story...instead of just outright blocking something that isn't verifiably false? This isn't remotely the same as QAnon or antivaxxing, as that are verifiably false.
    • nullc 6y ago
      I've wondered if it might be strategic, if there is any truth to it, to withhold proof and get the opposition busy denying it entirely... then present the proof and shoot their credibility completely and cause a bigger backlash.
• annexrichmond 6y ago
  Facebook also censors joebiden.info in private messages
  • paganel 6y ago
    Works for me on the desktop version, i.e. it isn't censored, I haven't checked though in their direct Facebook Messenger app. Also, am not from the US, have sent the joebiden.info link for testing to my gf who's also not from the US.
    • erichocean 6y ago
      Facebook and Twitter blocks items in the US that they do not block internationally.
      • paganel 6y ago
        TIL, very interesting.
• riffic 6y ago
  The ActivityPub standard and network exists. Nothing (absolutely nothing) is stopping the tabloid from running its own instance on nypost.com edit: and I wanted to reply to a comment here referring to section 230 but their comment got flagged and I am unable to reply to them. Not really sure why it was flagged but whatever, HN does what it does. My reply to that commenter would be that there is nothing stopping Congress-critters from standing up their own ActivityPub infra as well. A 'congress.gov' presence on the Fediverse would look pretty spiffy.
  • the_only_law 6y ago
    > Not really sure why it was flagged but whatever, HN does what it does. If you truly beleive the comment didn't deserve to be flagged (this does unfortunately happen sometimes, especially on threads like this) you can vouch for it if you have showdead on
    • riffic 6y ago
      vouch early and vouch often.
• optimuspaul 6y ago
  I don't pay for twitter, I don't have any reasonable expectations for a SLA regarding anything including DMs. Just like I have no responsibility to listen to people on soapboxes on street corners, and soap companies have no responsibility to provide soapboxes to anyone to shout from.
  • blhack 6y ago
    Yes you do. You pay with your attention and with your ability to understand the world around you. Twitter is an extremely powerful bit of technology that can basically make you believe anything. As a trade for entertainment/dopamine: you are allowing it to.
    • _qulr 6y ago
      > Twitter is an extremely powerful bit of technology that can basically make you believe anything. I don't believe this.
      • blhack 6y ago
        Then why does it matter if they censor things or not?
        • _qulr 6y ago
          It's a matter of freedom. The standard argument is that freedom of speech only applies to governments, but that's based on an outdated assumption. In human history, we've never before had individual companies like Facebook and Twitter that are so enormous and have so much control over our public speech. (2.7 billion and 330 million monthly active users, respectively.) They have become "the town square of the world", so to speak. Facebook and Twitter are not literally governments, but they're actually larger than many governments, with a larger population and more wealth than many nations. There's nothing special about governments with regard to freedom of speech except that it has always been assumed governments are the only entities with enough individual power to significantly restrict free speech. That assumption is no longer true. Indeed, the whole motivation behind this particular act of censorship is the idea that these platforms are so powerful that they can change the outcome of the election of one of the largest nations on Earth. I'm not sure I believe that, but it's clear in any case that Facebook and Twitter are not just normal "private companies". They're not little moderated discussion forums. They have effectively (unfortunately) become the public sphere. Twitter once locked me out of my account because I made a joke about bitcoin. Their stupid "algorithms" got me. And the only reason I was able to get my account unlocked was that I personally knew a Twitter engineer. I don't trust Jack or Zuck even one tiny bit to exercise the vast power they have to silence millions of people. It's not even a question of whether I agree with the NY Post article: the story is probably bullshit. But so were the news stories about Iraq having WMD. How about suspending the NY Times account too? How about suspending every news outlet that has published a debunked story? "Anonymous sources tell us that yadda yadda." By design, Facebook and Twitter allow everyone in the world to post anything they want. That includes lies. If they can't accept the consequences of the platform they created, then they should shut down. But as long as they exist, with the size of their user base, they are simply too big and too powerful to be allowed to restrict our freedom of speech.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• gjsman-1000 6y ago
  I can't really wrap my head around about how shortsighted of a move this is. Just two weeks ago(!) there was a hearing about Section 230 and Facebook and Twitter were saying it was necessary, and they submitted testimony about misinformation at that hearing. They've now blown any credibility they had left with half of Congress, possibly more, and have attracted 10x the attention and 10x the perceived credibility to the article. How did they not expect this to blow up in their face?
  • nullc 6y ago
    Well, for one S230 has nothing to do with this. You could revoke S230 today and they would be still completely free to do this... you'd just make it much more likely that not-for-profit and smaller venues like HN which allow users to share links to the NY post article couldn't stay in operation.
• throwaway4715 6y ago
  Facebook is NOT blocking the Post from posting. They are limiting sharing. This headline is a good example of way it may have been the right move. Misinformation spreads fast.
  • whateveracct 6y ago
    HN is full of unwitting Trump/conspiracy theory enablers with their high-minded bottomless "benefit of the doubt" schtick.
    • Zpalmtree 6y ago
      yesss please tell me what to believe twitter
      • googthrowaway42 6y ago
        This is actually how these people think. They are like children wanting to be protected and guided by adults.
  • Karunamon 6y ago
    They literally locked their account.
• partiallypro 6y ago
  It's not just that, they (Twitter) were actively suspending people that were posting the article from Google/Bing cached pages. They have also seemingly prevented the story from trending very high or very long.
• taxicab 6y ago
  To be fair, the fact that it was published by the New York Post already seriously undercuts the article's credibility. Edit: and also the fact that it was written in collaboration with the President's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
  • dimitrios1 6y ago
    Yet I don't recall anyone questioning Buzzfeed News when they dropped their bombshell story years back. I remember the defenders saying something along the lines of "If the news is newsworthy and constitutes journalism, then the publication it was produced in shouldn't matter" As HN audience mostly claim to be full of "independent thinkers" we should have no problem with this being published by the Post if it indeed is legitimate, correct?
    • cofeecup 6y ago
      Well in that case, let me just clear my schedule to spend all of tomorrow performing an exhaustive fact check of the credibility of this story. /s It turns out that journalism is hard to do correctly. As an "independent thinker" I'm going to independently decide to not trust a publication with the reputation of the NY Post until it's been corroborated.
      • sj3k 6y ago
        So glad I see this sentiment on here. I am still blown away by HN readers inability to critically analyze news sources. If this was some research paper it would have been put under the microscope by HN readers.
        • A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
          It helps that research papers on scientific domains have relatively easily verifiable data. It is much harder to claim ( not impossible ) that 1 is actually 0 if looked at from the right distance. Once we get to news ( assuming we bypass the whole conversation over how what passes for news is often opinion, or clickbait these days... ) you find out that 1s could indeed become 0s, you might not know all the facts, writers have bias, editors have bias, culture won't allow certain things to be said, polite society won't have a given phrase used.. the list just goes on and on. It is not inability. It is just a ridiculous exercise in futility. Chomsky can barely do it. And he has way better memory, command of language and reasoning skills than I do.
• woeirua 6y ago
  I think the NY Post story is going to be discredited pretty quickly, and even if it is true, it's nothing new. That said, I think Twitter massively overreached on their efforts regarding this particular story. It would have been far more effective to just label these tweets as containing potentially misleading information. The story would have died out tomorrow and life would've gone on. Instead this has blown up in their face spectacularly and directly lends credibility to the idea that they have their finger on the scale for Biden. If Trump wins reelection I imagine that he will immediately use the full force of the DOJ against Twitter. At this point, Twitter might as well just lean into it, and go all out for Biden. They're damned if they do, and damned if they don't, so might as well pick a side and hope that you're on the winning side. FB might get off here for only "slowing down" the spread of the article, but maybe not.
• cblconfederate 6y ago
  I 'm really glad that social media are discrediting themselves. Censorship has been going on for years but the blatant covid-powered covert misinformation along with the blatant suppression of competitors might finally turn off enough people away from them. I always though of them as the continuation of reality-show trash TV , which always had an audience but nowhere near to the proportions it has today (even if it's dressed up with makeup and ironed suits). If people learn to finally shut up and listen instead of shouting it will be a good thing for public life. Or they may just realize there's no way to agree and everyone goes their own way. Both are better than a fruitless stalemate. (easy with the flagging guys. half the comments here are flagged. You re supposed to flag spam not anything that you wish wasnt there. wishful thinking isnt gonna help your cause)
• eranimo 6y ago
  Really confused why right-wing disinformation is trending on Hacker News
  • esja 6y ago
    Tech censorship is extremely relevant to many people here, both professionally and personally.
  • spoopyskelly 6y ago
    Don't worry, it will go back to left-wing disinformation with the next news cycle.
• Covzire 6y ago
  Let's be honest, the only people screaming for censorship are firmly on the left. Controlling "disinformation" is a dog whistle for censorship, hoping that average citizens don't realize what they're really after. We all know who is going to be the moderators in flagging "disinformation" and we all know which ideology they overwhelmingly favor. I'd sooner trust a pyromaniac as fire chief of my local county than I would trust big tech companies to manage "disinformation" on my behalf.
  • tootie 6y ago
    I don't think that's a fair judgement at all. Not when the right is actively attacking honest journalism at its source while also screaming about anti-conservative bias on social media every time they filter disinformation. I would also not at all categorize deplatforming disinformation as censorship either. Nor incitement to violence. I only agree in that it's not a job that any of these companies are setup to handle. EDIT: https://www.npr.org/2020/05/27/863011399/trump-threatens-to-shut-down-social-media-after-twitter-adds-warning-on-his-twee https://www.npr.org/2020/05/27/863011399/trump-threatens-to-...
  • colinmhayes 6y ago
    Well yea, the left wants misinformation to be labeled/censored because they're no willing to lie like the right does. Once the left catches on to the need o create their own fake news you'll see this from both sides.
    • Covzire 6y ago
      Are you absolutely sure you would notice when the left 'catches on' and starts creating their own fake news? You might be able to spot it when there is a constant parade of anonymous sources that never seem to provide any actual proof for bombshell claims meant to hurt Trump etc. Or maybe various newspapers and cable outlets will run hundreds of stories and thousands upon thousands of hours of ill-sourced coverage into the opposite allegations against Trump, that he would be colluding with some foreign actor, say, i don't know, Russia? Maybe prominent Democrat house members might make claims again and again to the media that they had seen first hand evidence of collusion with Russia. Maybe the jig would be up when, under oath they would be asked the same questions and they were suddenly not so sure, nor could they produce any evidence. It would be tricky, for sure.
• gjsman-1000 6y ago
  If I was a Twitter or Facebook investor, I have one question: What did you expect was going to happen? Honestly. Did nobody have the foresight at Facebook or Twitter to think that this wouldn't blow up? Did nobody think, just once, that this might invite regulatory action or be in news headlines? And if honestly nobody thought this might happen, I'd want the entire management and "safety" team replaced for having no foresight for their actions whatsoever.
  • fennecfoxen 6y ago
    Also in this category of "did you actually think this through": Andy Stone, of the Facebook communications department, calling for fact checks while gloating about reducing its circulation. https://twitter.com/andymstone/status/1316395902479872000 https://twitter.com/andymstone/status/1316395902479872000 (n.b. "gloating" is interpretation — if it is not the case that this is gloating then a key problem is that this tweet leaves itself very open to this interpretation.)
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • trident1000 6y ago
    They are utilities at this point I hope they get treated this way. The monopolistic public square of debate cant have kings in charge. Also can you imagine what would happen if big tech oligopolies teamed up with one political party for a "I scratch your back you scratch mine" situation. You could have a 1 party political system for eternity and essentially remove the democratic system. The threat of big tech oppression is significant. And if you watched the movie "the social dilemma" the oppression and political strong arming by big tech is already happening in countries outside the US.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • tboyd47 6y ago
    They probably have been doing this for a while, and this was just the first time they got called out for it. Regulatory action has been in the works for some time. Whether or not it goes through depends only on politics. The mainstream media already doesn't like them for eating their lunch. Twitter has nothing to lose by doing this. It will damage Facebook's brand identity as being a "free speech" platform, but that's about as factual as Google's "don't be evil" brand or Apple's "privacy first" brand.
• spoiler 6y ago
  This whole post looks like "50 Shades of Comments" with all the mixed levels of downvotes.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• rectang 6y ago
  For a counterpoint on why this story is likely BS: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/fivepoints/5-points-on-why-the-new-biden-emails-distortion-is-so-bogus https://talkingpointsmemo.com/fivepoints/5-points-on-why-the...
  • partiallypro 6y ago
    It likely is BS, but not definitely. Even some of the points in the TPM article aren't very strong (I'm sorry, but journalists mocking the story isn't a point.) But, even if it is, it's not the role of Facebook to decide it is or isn't, when it is not verify-ably false. Instead they should just elevate critics of the article/scoop like the article you linked.
    • runarberg 6y ago
      Extraordinary times calls for extraordinary actions. The coming US election is no small deal, and we have seen in past elections how bad actors have been using social media to undermine democracy (including but not limited to influencing elections). You really can’t blame Twitter and Facebook here for taking the more radical step against an obvious smear campaign that blatantly fails the smell test. I’m sure if this story turns out to be true, we will hear about it from more reliable media, at which point the social media companies can offer an apology and release the links to this article.
      • SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
        We absolutely can blame them. Twitter and Facebook have repeatedly taken the position that there's no need to reform section 230 or otherwise strongly regulate their moderation, because they're very dedicated to the idea of free discourse and would never abuse their power. If they now feel that free discourse is dangerous and shouldn't be allowed, they should let the country know that so that we can make regulatory decisions accordingly.
      • disown 6y ago
        > how bad actors have been using social media to undermine democracy That's the propaganda some have been pushing. What was it? Russia spent $50K on facebook ads and won trump the election? > I’m sure if this story turns out to be true, we will hear about it from more reliable media, Like CNN or the nytimes or the washingtonpost which peddled trump-russia conspiracy for 4 years? Lets be real here, you support this censorship because of your political bias. If facebook was censoring the other side, you'd be railing against facebook. "he/him" lmao.
• madrox 6y ago
  This seems like an interesting corollary to the Streisand Effect, where shutting down means of spreading information makes the information spread further.
• donatj 6y ago
  But they didn't block stories about Trump's stolen tax returns? Is there any sort of non-political justification?
  • aeortiz 6y ago
    because they could be verified.
    • donatj 6y ago
      Afaik the returns have not been verified.
    • 9HZZRfNlpR 6y ago
      But twitters response was they don't allow "hacked materials" so it's bs.
• StanislavPetrov 6y ago
  Aside from the censorship issue, Twitter is making a mockery of its own policy. Twitter is ostensibly blocking this article under their, "no hacks or leaks may be linked to" policy, while only a couple of weeks ago the story about the Trump tax returns (derived from a leak) was all over Twitter without being suppressed at all. If Twitter is going to arbitrarily choose which news to censor it should do so without using the fig leaf of a policy that Twitter itself openly violates.
  • cblconfederate 6y ago
    Twitter isnt required to be impartial, they are allowed to editorialize to their preference like all the media does. There's a certain anomaly in the US that doesn't provide other media with the same legal protections, but that's something to work on
    • StanislavPetrov 6y ago
      Twitter isn't required to be impartial, but you'd think they'd want to avoid openly painting themselves as lying hypocrites. If they are going to censor news they don't like, they'd be better off just censoring it rather than putting on the patently false charade of pretending they have a standard which is being violated. A simple, "we reserve the right to remove any and all content posted" would suffice, instead of pretending to be impartial arbiters of truth.
• shiado 6y ago
  This kind of mess is why I respected Wikileaks so much for all those years including the 2016 leaks. Leaking is an art that requires dumping verifiable and irrefutable documents to as many people as possible so they can independently investigate them. These plant jobs in partisan media will never be received credibly.
• runarberg 6y ago
  Just step back a little and consider the alternatives here. NYP is pretty obviously smearing for a major civil event here, a civil event that has the potential of causing serious harm to the second largest democracy in the world. If the social media companies would just allow this smearing to go unhindered, they are basically saying: “We don’t care if bad actors use our platform to undermine our democracy,” which is nuts.
  • TMWNN 6y ago
    >NYP is pretty obviously smearing for a major civil event here What makes this "obviously smearing"?
    • runarberg 6y ago
      1. The sensationalism of the original title. The accusation here is that the candidate’s son introduced a Ukrainian businessman to him. This is hardly a smoking gun evidence against the father doing anything wrong. 2. There is no evidence that the emails are in fact real, and nothing is even offered to that extent. 3. The article does not come from a reputable news source. In fact it comes from a news source with serious damage to it’s reputation. 4. No other major news outlet is picking this story up, further undermining the credibility of the article. If I was a social media company I wouldn’t want to touch this with a 10 meter pole.
      • extropy 6y ago
        0. Event with high reputation impact potential, just before the election. Seriously we should have a 4 week quiet period. So people can sort out though all the dirt and make sense of what is real. This just pushses everyone into sensory overload to blind out any rational thought.
      • throwawaysea 6y ago
        Major news outlets differ greatly on which stories the give attention to based on their biases. And their reputation depends on your personal political bias. You're asking for evidence the emails are real but no such evidence was demanded when NYT posted findings from what they claim are Trump's financial records. If you're a social media company, your job isn't to decide what's true or untrue or what is permissible to share or not share. It is to facilitate communication and get out of the way. Instead, we're seeing companies that control the digital public square enact severely biased policies that favor their employee's politics. That's dangerous and unacceptable.
• gotoeleven 6y ago
  I think at this point it might be easier for Twitter and Facebook to just provide a list of pre-approved messages you're allowed to send to their platforms.
• moron4hire 6y ago
  I don't know what's going on with the article in question, but I read this: > Facebook announced it would limit the sharing of the story while fact-checkers reviewed the piece. And immediately realize, this is it. Facebook is a publisher, not a platform.
  • donmcronald 6y ago
    Paraphrasing for a HN comment I saw a while back. A reverse chronological feed of your friends’ posts is a platform. A recommendation engine is a publisher. That makes a lot of sense to me.
    • amadeuspagel 6y ago
      I don't agree. A recommendation engine can (and should) be completely neutral.
      • moron4hire 6y ago
        The entire point of a recommendation engine is to not be neutral, but to induce some kind of bias. Otherwise, you'd be seeing random entries, not recommended ones.
        • amadeuspagel 6y ago
          A neutral recommendation engine is one that simply recommends things that I'll probably like, based on other things I liked without any human interference.
          • moron4hire 6y ago
            A human had to program it, so there is no such thing as "without human interference".
            • amadeuspagel 6y ago
• cryptica 6y ago
  I have a feeling that Facebook wants Trump to be elected. I think Mark Zuckerberg may have discovered how to play "Good cop, bad cop" this year. First, he played good cop trying to protect free speech while his employees played bad cop trying to censor. That was just a test to see how people reacted. To see if people perceived Mark Zuckerberg better after this. Now Facebook is playing bad cop so that Trump can be the good cop and win the election. Facebook is benefiting from inflationary monetary policy and Trump being eyeballs deep in debt will ensure that inflationary policy continues. Trump is not going to let the economy tank on his watch. If Biden wins, he will let the economy tank early in his term and blame it on Trump. BTW, Spotify also played "Good cop, bad cop" with its employees this year related to Joe Rogan. Again, Spotify management playing good cop letting Joe Rogan express himself and Spotify employees playing bad cop wanting him censored.
  • cryptica 6y ago
    Good to see the downvotes coming in as predicted. I must have got this right. The tech elites are all banding together as always.
    • cryptica 6y ago
      Now votes started going back up after I posted this second comment. Again, as predicted. I should have worked for Facebook. Trump would already be Supreme World Dictator by now and the Federal Reserve Bank would have been merged into Facebook.
• atlgator 6y ago
  Facebook recruiters keep messaging. I keep ignoring.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• calibas 6y ago
  Isn't there a major antitrust case pending against Facebook & Twitter? This doesn't seem like a good move on their parts.
• dionian 6y ago
  They been steadily ramping up their efforts to silence voices. It starts with the people you dont like, the Alex Jones and the Richard Spencers. And now it's come to censoring news, while using Orwellian excuses like "fact-checking" and "harmful content". This must be stopped and it must be stopped now. Trump is right, we should remove their special FCC protections. The American People do not need Silicon Valley to tell us what we can and cannot read.
• galkk 6y ago
  I'm Ukrainian citizen and I'm truly outraged about entire Hunter Biden/Burisma story. Vultures, praying on a weak country.
• reaperducer 6y ago
  They came for the rando blog, and I said nothing... They came for the New York Post and I said nothing... They came for the (dnja$4 NO CARRIER
• blhack 6y ago
  I’ve said before and I will continue saying: twitter CANNOT be the arbiter if truth. It will NEVER work, and trying to do so will be their undoing, but not before they make the problem they think they’re solving infinitely worse.
  • extropy 6y ago
    Welcome to the new world.
• reaperducer 6y ago
  I've known the New York Post as a rag for as long as I've been alive, but I still occasionally buy a copy. But I when I see Twitter and Facebook deciding they have better journalistic judgement than a major newspaper, it seems that the world is upside down.
• throwawaymanbot 6y ago
  Its a fake story anyway, there should be repercussions for publishing hackjobs. This is a good start.
• dmode 6y ago
  Maybe NY Post should try to publish something objective rather than being a rag mouthpiece for a terrible human being
• patrickaljord 6y ago
  Here's the article for those wondering https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden-introduced-ukrainian-biz-man-to-dad/ https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/email-reveals-how-hunter-biden...
  • reilly3000 6y ago
    This is a colossal failure of a scam to discredit Biden. There was no chain of custody, the proported email had tons of tell tale signs of being faked, and NYPost posted exif data that undermined their whole claim. They even used ints for ids allowing a lot of unpublished docs out. https://twitter.com/russelneiss/status/1316398928850452481 https://twitter.com/russelneiss/status/1316398928850452481 https://twitter.com/russelneiss/status/1316402052885606400 https://twitter.com/russelneiss/status/1316402052885606400 https://twitter.com/marcusjcarey/status/1316386740794425344 https://twitter.com/marcusjcarey/status/1316386740794425344 National Review is part of the disinfo apparatus. Take anything they say with a pound of salt.
    • sparkling 6y ago
      The screenshot of the email being displayed by the Apple Mail client does look a bit odd. May have been edited by the NYPost to show the names along with the email address? /edit: actually, it does format in that way, but only when you export the mail as PDF from Apple Mail, not in the client itself Anyway, my 2 cents having worked with many Russians and Ukranians: the overall tone, writing style and vocabulary used does not read like its from a native russian speaker.
    • mberning 6y ago
      They are complaining about the format of the email, but don’t seem to realize that the client is the OS X Mail app.
    • thecureforzits 6y ago
      Interesting also to note that comments like yours pointing out the flimsiness of the evidence are being heavily censored by HN.
    • 6y ago
• spamizbad 6y ago
  The interview with the repair shop owner is also reduces this story’s already dwindling credibility: https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunters-laptop-to-rudy-speaks-out-in-bizarre-interview https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter...
  • googthrowaway42 6y ago
    That's what it sounds like when you interview a normal human being at the center of something so politically sensitive and dealing with such high level corruption. “When you’re afraid and you don’t know anything about the depth of the waters that you’re in, you want to find a lifeguard.” Entirely reasonable sentiment to express.
  • Rebelgecko 6y ago
    IMO it's relevant that twitter is blocking the story due to their rules about releasing hacked material, not misinformation. If the hard drive is a hoax, I think it's important to have an open discussion to shine a light on it. Banning the article in a way that appears to validate its claims will only embolden claims of a conspiracy. I think it's also interesting that the "hacking" ban doesn't have an exemption for the press. Even though the NY Post is fairly partisan even by tabloid standards,it seems like a double standard if I can still link to an NY Times article containing information about classified government activities that were revealed via hacking
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    • zzleeper 6y ago
      > If the hard drive is a hoax, I think it's important to have an open discussion to shine a light on it. The damage is still done then. NYPost knows the article is fake news, and so does Giuliani and the other folks surrounding the article. But put it there, and by the time your "open discussion" is done, the elections will be over.
      • 6y ago
• Karunamon 6y ago
  This was a shockingly dumb move. Whether or not you think these actions were politically motivated or made in good faith, it just poured liquid oxygen on the "reform section 230" fire you're seeing from both sides of the aisle - one using the censorship reason, the other using the disinformation reason. There's no way you don't block a newspaper, and the press secretary, and prevent anyone from even private messaging the link to each other, and blocking people who share screenshots, and not invite serious scrutiny or action. The legislative blowback is going to suck. Section 230 is an ordinary law, not a constitutional right or based on one, and that means it's exposed to all the usual political fighting.
  • fooey 6y ago
    There won't be legislative blow back, the GOP is days away from being wholesale evicted from controlling anything at all in DC. As a legislative move, this is changing their bet to the horse that's about to win. The social media companies are clearly more afraid longterm of what happens if they let this kind of stunt spread than they are afraid of the lame duck.
    • Karunamon 6y ago
      What makes you think that the Dems wouldn't like to make social media companies liable for misinfo? That's what I'm trying to say, here. Either way you slice it, 230 is in the crosshairs, it's just a matter of who's holding the gun and for what purpose. I also wouldn't bet a cent of my own money on the GOP being "wholesale evicted". I heard very similar, equally confident talk in 2016.
      • travmatt 6y ago
        Democrats haven’t been raising 230 regulation though, that’s been republicans disgruntled that their ads had been fact-checked (by partisan conservatives, it turns out). The proposed regulations coming out of the house have been more about competition and anti-monopoly. It’s hard to see this as anything more than an attempt to change their bet on a losing horse in this race, as the commenter you replied to pointed out. And I’m not sure if we’re remembering the same 2016 election. We’re both talking about the same election, that resulted in the largest win for an American political party in history, right? 2016 was absolutely horrendous for conservatives and their saving grace was the senate cycle was particularly bad for democrats. If there’s a similar performance this election there’s a good chance that they take both branches.
• throwaway69123 6y ago
  Big Tech making themselves look really bad with this.
• hnshooray 6y ago
  Fantastic. Hacker News front page. An obviously planted, right wing, desperate smear job giving some true geniuses here a chance to whine about supposed “censorship” [sic] of their silly views. Also a 2006 article from a professional “medical hypothesizer” about how you can hum your way to better nasal health. Slow clap. Truly one of HNs finest hours.
• twirlock 6y ago
  Yet another example of our society having a massive, oppressive double-standard about which worldviews should benefit from freedom of express, and of course the beneficiaries ardently refuse to admit there's anything like that going on.
• throwawaysea 6y ago
  Also, Twitter locked Kayleigh McEnany (White House Press Secretary) out of her twitter account for sharing the Hunter Biden story: https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/kayleigh-mcenany-locked-out-of-twitter-for-sharing-posts-hunter-biden-story/ https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/kayleigh-mcenany-locked-out-of... If you look at the screenshots, Twitter notes that the reason her account is locked is because they do not allow their service to be used to distribute "content obtained through hacking that contains private information..." Why is this rule applicable to the NY Post's story, but not to stories from the New York Times concerning Trump's financial records, which were also illegally obtained? This seems like clear evidence of a politically-biased double-standard.
• lettergram 6y ago
  Reminds me of why I wrote this chrome extension a few years back (uses Keybase for now): https://lettergram.github.io/AnyCrypt/ https://lettergram.github.io/AnyCrypt/ Basically, you can encrypt a message over any medium (facebook, twitter, email, etc.). Wasn't super secure by any means, but the media companies wouldn't know what's being shared. Honestly, I might rework it (not utilizing keybase). I think I can make it decentralized and / or super easy to use. It's already pretty much plug-and-play provided you know the recipients email.
  • arminiusreturns 6y ago
    I've always thought this might be a great approach in limited situations (using encryption over unencrypted public "channels"). Kudos to you for the project, even if it didn't get much traction.
• MangoCoffee 6y ago
  i believed every American can agree that Hunter Biden won't get a seat on a gas company's board and China investment if his last name is Smith. is it a corruption? maybe not but its cronyism. this NY Post story touch on this sore spot. i have no love for big tech. if Section 230 is on the chopping block. Big tech did this to themselves.
• Tycho 6y ago
  Crux of the issue is that everyone knows there’s a double standard. Why do they co-ordinate to block this story and not the countless other “unverified” scoops? Because it threatens a protected politician.
  • thekashifmalik 6y ago
    This should be the main story instead of whether censorship on twitter is okay or not. Call out the blatant bias. (So surprising for a company based in a liberal haven)
  • bufferoverflow 6y ago
    Spot-on. When NPR got caught posting fake news recently, absolutely nothing happened to them. When CNN does it, nothing happens to them. The game is rigged.
    • Balgair 6y ago
      NPR was posting fake news?
      • blisseyGo 6y ago
        I know this will get attacked for the source but this summarizes it well. There's numerous other examples too: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/npr-busted-framing-self-defense-getaway-gunmen-right-wing-vehicle-attack https://www.zerohedge.com/political/npr-busted-framing-self-... The whole "russian bounty" was completely false too.
        • Balgair 6y ago
          I mean, on average, articles published by some dude calling himself Tyler Durden (in 2020) probably should be taken with a pinch of salt. Also, hedging that you;ll get attacked isn't a good foot to start off with either. If the evidence is sound, let it stand on it's own.
    • petee 6y ago
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• sawjet 6y ago
  > Politico: "Biden’s campaign would not rule out the possibility that the former VP had some kind of informal interaction with Pozharskyi" It's all over folks.
• m0zg 6y ago
  It's remarkable that just weeks ago all the same actors had zero problems with illegally leaked tax returns from the other candidate. Hmm. I wonder why. Giuliani is promising to publish much more, including a photo in which Biden junior is having sex with a hooker while smoking crack. This is the same media companies that for 4 years told us that "the walls are closing in" due to the completely discredited "pee dossier".
• jimmydorry 6y ago
  Absolutely agree, but I don't think this is the tipping point yet. An important line was crossed, but it will probably take a bit more before there is enough political capital to do something. On the other hand, if the party benefiting from this move gets into power, that might be enough to stop any change from happening.
  • bosswipe 6y ago
    What happens if the party that is attacking our democracy by spreading disinformation in the last few weeks of the election gets into power?
    • 0xy 6y ago
      Just curious why you say this is disinformation given the lack of proof. Is this your opinion or are you attacking the article based on the source?
      • bosswipe 6y ago
        I don't believe the source because they're known liars. I definitely don't believe the story that a laptop with Ukrainian emails was left in a DC repair shop and then given to Trump's personal propagandist lawyer Rudy Guliani. Also they're not publishing the emails headers as explained here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24780927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24780927
        • wdn 6y ago
          But you believe Clinton can just delete the email and gone forever?
        • 0xy 6y ago
          Even if Guliani got the source from Russian intelligence, that does not mean the emails are automatically not authentic. Does it mean the Russians are interfering? Probably. Does it mean their evidence of corruption is void? Not really. If this is the Russians (unproven speculation on your part), it does not mean the emails are not authentic.
• valar_m 6y ago
  This isn't inviting Section 230 reform, as some are arguing. It's a move to get out ahead of it. From the DOJ's proposed 230 legislation[0]: >>The second category of amendments is aimed at incentivizing platforms to address the growing amount of illicit content online, while preserving the core of Section 230’s immunity for defamation claims. >>Section 230 immunity is meant to incentivize and protect online Good Samaritans. Platforms that purposely solicit and facilitate harmful criminal activity — in effect, online Bad Samaritans — should not receive the benefit of this immunity. Nor should a platform receive blanket immunity for continuing to host known criminal content on its services, despite repeated pleas from victims to take action. Enforcing a hacked materials policy is fully consistent with the DOJ's proposed change. It's a classic strategy to curb potential regulation - clean up your act to show that you don't need to be regulated. [0] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-unveils-proposed-section-230-legislation https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-unveils-pr...
• A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
  To be honest it sounds like a regular end of the election craziness. To all those people, who think this is somehow special and deserves special new set of rules, I can only point to 2016 ( Comey saga that also included Guliani ). It is not special. It is not new. It is still speech. It may be lies ( and I am sure we will find out soon enough ) and I get that a lot of people can be influenced. I get it. And it still think it is risky to the existing system that RELIES on lies flowing freely. What I do not get is why some people honestly do believe that an average person needs to be protected from lies by a censor? And who ensures censor is not a liar? Who guards the guards? The question is important as people seem to be clamoring for rather powerful guards of 'what is true truth'.
  • specialist 6y ago
    "What I do not get is why some people honestly do believe that an average person needs to be protected from lies by a censor?" I was a Chomsky style free speech ultimatist. Unfortunately, humans aren't rational. Lying is super effective, its effects pernicious. They activate identity and trigger negative partisanship. Simply trying to refute lies only embeds them further. Profiting from the outrage machine (dopamine addiction) has created a vicious cycle, and worse every year. Is this really what we want? The founders had the notion that democracy requires an informed populace. When the audience of NY Post, Fox News, OANN, and others are objectively, stubbornly anti-informed, how is democracy served? What's the alternative to censorship? How does Truth prevail in the public square? Even Good Samaritan Chomsky has no response to the Paradox of Tolerance. -- For my part, I think it's hysterical that Facebook and Twitter censored a NY Post. That's like the biggest dealer of crack cocaine indignantly tossing a hit of molly in the trash, because that crap ain't no good for y'all. I'm still baffled why any one would get their news from NY Post, Facebook, or Twitter. It's quite a stretch to call any of that "news". So I don't see how allegations of censorship even apply.
    • A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
      I don't think you are wrong. I would not dare to suggest there are easy answers here. My initial reaction was to attempt to argue that we are not, in fact a democracy, completely derailing the conversation in an attempt simply to 'win' an argument. I am oddly surprised with myself over this. There is no ego here. Nothing to prove. And yet, the need to be right on the internet prevails. This agrees with your note that humans are not rational. I definitely agree that lying is effective. I agree that outrage machine is getting really annoying, but I also found a way to deal with it in an imperfect way. Stop consuming this information and, eventually, stop internalizing this overwhelming pile of crap that is shoved into our minds 24/7. There is a reason we are a republic. There is a reason we protect ( or at least give lip service to protecting ) minority voices. And that's usually, because popular opinions don't need defenders. And I want those voices protected even if they are unpopular, ill-informed, dishonest, or even just lying. The alternative is that we ban lying. Period. No cute ads that dance on the edge of misrepresentation. No white lies. You had a shitty day. Say so. No lie of omission. Your company uses child labor, disclose it in 10-k ( oi, all material facts should be available for investors ). No politician talk. We usher a new world where dictionary police is king and every single one of us has to weigh each word carefully.. I feel I should apologize. This post may be now coming across as snarky. I think that fact that I don't really have a good answer makes me frustrated. edit: added don't in last sentence.
• bleepblorp 6y ago
  It's highly ironic that the so-called defenders of free speech have torn through this HN thread downvoting and flagging posts that support Twitter's specific actions or anti-disinformation efforts in general. Free speech for me but not for thee, much? To those of you who have done this, or don't have a problem with it, or are about to downvote and/or flag this post, think carefully about if you're actually defending free speech or only speech that you agree with.
  • Sargos 6y ago
    I'm not sure what argument you're making here. Twitter is a public forum akin to a government institution and is now censoring political viewpoints it disagrees with. You shouldn't be surprised that free speech advocates are livid about this and perplexed at those who would defend such a thing.
    • krapp 6y ago
      >Twitter is a public forum akin to a government institution and is now censoring political viewpoints it disagrees with. No it isn't. It's a platform run by a private company for its own ends that offers membership under terms of service which grant it absolute, universal, irrevocable and arbitrary rights over user content and accounts. Terms of service that everyone with an account agreed to beforehand. That it has global reach no more makes it a public forum than CNN, the BBC or the Wall Street Journal, and "akin to a government institution" is just an attempt to muddy the waters between the definitions of public and private enterprise. If you or anyone wants to make this a free speech issue, don't misrepresent the nature of the problem. State that you want the government to take over social media platforms, restrict their free speech rights and force them to publish content against their will. Even if it's racist, even if it's false, even if they're not a general purpose forum, the men with guns should force them to. People who claim, for instance, that it should be a crime for websites to moderate any content, in any way, that isn't strictly illegal, or that all moderation should be subject to judicial review (both positions I've seen repeatedly here) should realize just how radical and potentially authoritarian such moves would be, particularly given their correlation with the current atmosphere of anti-leftist panic.
    • 6y ago
• partiallypro 6y ago
  One might even argue that Facebook/Twitter are doing this explicitly to ensure a party is put in power that won't try to reform them in any way. Their actions show it, and their political donations show it. That's my putting on the tin foil, but I think you could make such an argument. We always talk about Big Oil, etc being friends to Republicans, but often ignore Big Tech's close ties to Democrats.
  • syndacks 6y ago
    Yep, def using the Heavy Duty kind tonight.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • tyre 6y ago
    I would expect it has less to do with who they want to be elected than who they think will be elected. If the polls are anywhere close to real, they’re going to see both houses of Congress plus the executive in Democratic hands. That is the same party publicly calling for their breakup. So if you see it coming, get out ahead of it.
  • untog 6y ago
    Big Tech also has plenty of close ties to Republicans: remember when Facebook’s Joel Kaplan appeared at Kavanaugh’s Senate hearing? https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-facebook-exec-backs-kavanaugh-at-senate-hearing https://www.thedailybeast.com/top-facebook-exec-backs-kavana... And find one of @pinboard’s regular threads on the political donations big tech companies make and you’ll find a lot of Republicans: https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1152245502361997314 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1152245502361997314 The reality is that once you’re as big as FB, Google and the rest you have enough money to play both sides of the aisle. Doesn’t matter who is in power, you’ve got them both under control.
    • blisseyGo 6y ago
      EDIT: dang, I understand my political views don't align with vast majority of HN but me replying to correct false info keeps giving me this error on HN: "You're posting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks." I think HN keeps turning into an echo chamber and any opposing view point on a specific political topic gets censored/throttled here too. How can you expect me to have a proper discussion when I am not even allowed to reply? ---- 96% of the donations from Big Tech went to Democrats. This is a verifiable fact. The first censorship of this story came from Facebook and the statement from them was this by Andy Stone, FB communications. Andy Stone is a former DCCC (DCCC: Committed to electing Democrats to the U.S. House of Representatives) https://mobile.twitter.com/andymstone/status/1316395902479872000 https://mobile.twitter.com/andymstone/status/131639590247987... The person at twitter making these decisions is Nick Pacilio, Twitter Communications who's also Kamala Harris' former press secretary: https://twitter.com/NickPacilio/status/1291160646231392261 https://twitter.com/NickPacilio/status/1291160646231392261 Facebook's executive Jessica Hertz as well as Twitter's director of public policy Carlos Monje are Biden's transition team. Kamala Harris had repeatedly called for suspending her opponent's twitter account: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mnunez/2019/10/02/kamala-harris-tells-twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-to-suspend-president-donald-trumps-account-in-new-letter/#4c6aa38a6648 https://www.forbes.com/sites/mnunez/2019/10/02/kamala-harris...
• mensetmanusman 6y ago
  This is huge. I wonder what the fallout will be.
• Axighi 6y ago
  I'm wondering if the so called leaked material is about Donald Trump, will they ban it too?
• rat87 6y ago
  Good for Twitter for doing the right thing
  • Karunamon 6y ago
    Did they do the right thing? By engaging in the censorship of a large newspaper and at least one politician, the resulting streisand effect amplified the message far beyond what it would have gotten had they left it alone. If the goal was to suppress disinformation, they failed miserably.
    • TameAntelope 6y ago
      I think the goal was to minimize the impact of news without adequate sourcing on the US presidential election, and I think that goal was achieved. The conversation is about censorship and truth, not really Hunter Biden and Burisma. Admittedly, there may be a cost to pay for that, and it's possible it was a long-term bad decision, but their goal seems to have been met.
      • Karunamon 6y ago
        That news is now being hosted directly by the house judiciary committee on a .gov site. I don't think they did a very good job of preventing the spread, nor do I think this would have happened had they just kept their hands off. https://twitter.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/1316485994548547586 https://twitter.com/JudiciaryGOP/status/1316485994548547586
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• justinzollars 6y ago
  When I was in high school, our network had software, perfectly branded as "Net Nanny" installed which prevented us from visiting certain websites. It was totally lame. I can't understand why my generation wants to recreate Net Nanny on facebook and twitter. It just adds to the 2020 feeling that everything, all at once, is completely falling apart.
  • Rapzid 6y ago
    Why didn't you just go to a different high school?
    • justinzollars 6y ago
      I went to public school, man
• whatever1 6y ago
  Whatever it takes to get rid of a tyrant. The guy has repeatedly shown that he has no appreciation for the institutions, the unity of the nation, democracy or the election process itself. He will do whatever he can to stay in power. We should make sure he does not succeed.
  • ALittleLight 6y ago
    Strive not too long with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and gaze not too long into the abyss lest the abyss gaze back at you.
  • hyperdunc 6y ago
    Replace the word 'tyrant' with the name of almost any major political player and it remains relevant. The corruption runs far beyond any individual.
    • whatever1 6y ago
      I don’t think that any other US political player comes even close to the dangerous rhetoric of Trump. Democrat, Republican, or independent. The attack on the election itself that he started should be the biggest red flag for the citizens that none of his rants are normal.
      • hyperdunc 6y ago
        'Normal' is a state of duplicity where politicians present a veneer of respectability but actually betray their constituents by pursuing their own financial agendas behind the scenes. Trump at least somewhere wears his heart on his sleeve.
• whatsmyusername 6y ago
  The NY Post is the trashiest of tabloids, good.
• ffggvv 6y ago
  they should ban the NYT trump tax return story as presumably those records were hacked or gotten in an illegal method as well. Oh wait, these decisions only ever happen one way... not to mention the countless “russia” stories that have been debunked
• rat87 6y ago
  Good for Twitter and good for Facebook for once not bowing down to conservative demands to allow them to spread untrue propaganda and conspiracies (https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21357663/facebook-removed-strikes-conservative-fact-checking-banned-breitbart https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21357663/facebook-removed-...) I'm very surprised so many people have a problem with this. I'm even more surprised people are demanding that forums and social media be stripped of the ability to moderate porn, spam, and vile personal attacks (ie not be able to moderate anything not illegal). Oh plus conspiracies and racism. This would likely turn most forums including HN into trash
  • hartator 6y ago
    Was the email not real?
  • _qulr 6y ago
    > I'm even more surprised people are demanding that forums and social media be stripped of the ability to moderate porn, spam, and vile personal attacks (ie not be able to moderate anything not illegal). Oh plus conspiracies and racism. This would likely turn most forums including HN into trash Have you... seen Twitter? It's full of porn, spam, vile personal attacks, conspiracies, and racism. These things are mostly not moderated on Twitter. Maybe Twitter claims to moderate them, but the reality does not reflect that at all. The main reason we see controversy over social media censorship is that it's extremely selective, haphazard, inconsistent, and often misdirected. There's no apparent general principles behind the individual decisions, though principles are often trotted out ex post facto when required for PR.
    • rat87 6y ago
      >Have you... seen Twitter? It's full of porn, spam, vile personal attacks, conspiracies, and racism. These things are mostly not moderated on Twitter. So good thing they're trying for a change? That doesn't mean I agree with their moderation as a whole but they seem to have tried to do the right thing here
  • kanwisher 6y ago
• chrledntsurf 6y ago
  nobody that hasn't already decided on who they are voting for cares about any of this dumb shit
• libraryatnight 6y ago
  Is this censorship? My understanding is they held it for review, that just seems responsible? Also it seems like the NY Post article is highly suspect, so again, this seems responsible. Especially given echoes of a previous email "bombshell" that proved to be absolutely nothing after the damage was done? I just don't know what people want, they want FB to stop misinformation, but not step on anyone's speech? Also I see lots of cries this is partisan, but not seeing many credible examples, so if you're going to what-about on this please give sources. This thread is filled with claims of double standards and no links. We always hear the adage about free speech and screaming fire in a crowded theater; facebook is a crowded theater and we have a lot of people trying to yell fire.
  • woo49 6y ago
    a. They had the same information as everyone else, so what would they figure out in their ‘review’ that readers wouldn’t? B. It’s really the double standard that is the problem here. If you do it do it for this then do it for everything else, including the myriad stories about Trump that are posted based on ‘rumors’, ‘leaks’, anonymous sources etc. Whether you like Trump or not should not matter if you are honest with yourself! Funny thing is, this story was not ‘trending’ on twitter but the meta story (totally with no evidence) that this was the result of Russian hackers who gave the content to Rudy was trending! That tells you everything about why this is so inconsistent and thus either grossly incompetent or malicious.
    • libraryatnight 6y ago
      a) its the nypost, a tabloid. b) what stories? I keep seeing this. I see very little printed about trump that doesn't end up true. I also don't belong to FB so I legitimately have no idea what you're talking about. As I said in my reply, please supply links to any double standards cited.
• rayiner 6y ago
  Here is a further article on the event: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/twitter-and-facebooks-shameful-repression-of-the-new-york-posts-hunter-biden-story/ https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/twitter-and-facebooks... > By the afternoon, Twitter had joined Facebook in suppressing the article, not only barring its users from sharing it with followers, but barring them sharing it through direct messages as well. It locked the accounts of White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, the Post, and many others for retweeting the story. Twitter and Facebook decided to prove their critics right. Censorship was supposed to be for Russian bot-generated fake news. The New York Post may be a shitty tabloid, but it’s a real organization with a Manhattan office building and hundreds of thousands of subscribers. As far as I can tell, it’s unclear whether the laptop the New York Post sourced it’s emails from really belonged to Hunter Biden. That’s an ordinary question of a news article’s credibility. It’s insane to make that the bar for sharing an article on social media. Matt Taibbi has catalogued how many New York Times stories about Trump ultimately proved unfounded: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-bombshell-memory-hole-d20 https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-bombshell-memory-hole-d20 (paid). The Times is a hell of a lot more credible than the Post, but again, the fact that an article from a real source may prove to be wrong can’t be a justification for censoring it on social media.
• hashtagmarkup 6y ago
  If the president of the USA is allowed to keep posts up that are internally labelled as having broken their terms of service (generally regarding misinformation), and the posts are kept up in the name of public interest, I don't see how blocking the #8 newspaper in the USA benefits the public interest in any way. An obvious argument could be made that it detriments the public interest.
• gorgoiler 6y ago
  A presidential lackey says the emails came from an abandoned, unencrypted laptop. How dull. Is it too much to ask that these “breaches” involve some more elaborate spy tradecraft? At least tell me that they were wearing wigs when they screwed the HDD into a USB enclosure and just mounted it. Edited to add this article, which isn’t something I’d swear an oath on, but which has a great SoundCloud link in it interviewing the laptop tech himself: https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunters-laptop-to-rudy-speaks-out-in-bizarre-interview https://www.thedailybeast.com/man-who-reportedly-gave-hunter... ...where he literally talks anxiously about needing to “find people who are better [than me] at political spy craft.”
• robomartin 6y ago
  Businesses choose political alignment at their own peril. These two seem to be begging for disruptive government intervention of the most unpleasant kind.
• mynewycombi 6y ago
  Twitter is handing out week long bans to people retweeting the information 'because it is against our hacking rules' But there is no evidence the information was hacked - the shop owner says Hunter Biden signed the data and computer over to him via the 90 day unpaid clause. So Twitter is selectively enforcing their rules to suit their preferred narrative?
• Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
  Completely and thoroughly unacceptable. The standard they're citing as the reason is something they have never enforced before. They have never once throttled or banned articles that are anti-Dem. This was a massive screw-ups by Twitter and by Facebook and they know it. The argument for their regulation as publishers (rather than platforms) just got twice as strong. Absolute fools, and biased fools.
• rzmnzm 6y ago
  Can someone explain to me where Twitter and Facebook get the nerve to censor news stories from major publications? What exactly is going on here?
• AHappyCamper 6y ago
  As is usually the case, the cover-up ends up being a worse scandal than the scandal. When will they learn? Spoiler: they won't...
• msravi 6y ago
  Twitter is now censoring the government webpage for the Republican House Judiciary Committee. https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1316672984057176064 https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1316672984057176064
• Igalze 6y ago
  Bad idea. I agree with others here saying that this is not enough to change minds at this point (either direction) but I think that SM platforms are in no position to censor news content from a trusted publication. They should focus their efforts elsewhere. All of this feels like a publicity play to help with their current situation, which is yet to be resolved.
• aww_dang 6y ago
  If a free and open Internet was a threat to media gatekeepers, walled gardens have neutralized this threat. Outrage over this latest incident isn't misplaced, but regulation will only further entrench these platforms.
• born_a_skeptic 6y ago
  I'd really like to see how many times this post was flagged.
• CivBase 6y ago
  > Twitter said Thursday that it censored a New York Post article based on emails between Hunter Biden and a Burisma executive in accordance with its “hacked materials policy.” This is a joke. Nothing was hacked. The laptop was left at a repair shop and not reclaimed. The repair shop almost certainly retains ownership of unclaimed machines after some period of time. The shop owns the laptop. Maybe the emails were forged. Idk. But nothing was hacked.
• kazagistar 6y ago
  Wait, the FBI got a laptop for an investigation, it happened to end up dumped at a repair shop, which happened to search it for files and publish them? Its either lies or some pretty damming conspiracy, right?