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This post has a very odd tone, as if a private company enforcing their policy to remove unverified & leaked personal correspondence of a private citizen is some

This post has a very odd tone, as if a private company enforcing their policy to remove unverified & leaked personal correspondence of a private citizen is some unquestionable moral wrongdoing that's apparently going to blow up. Surprised to see this as at the top, on HN. National Review is a conservative wing-nut website trying to turn this non-story into fuel for their censorship culture war.

free_rms 6y ago
The pentagon papers were unverified and leaked. More recently and less impressively, the entire world of Russia-gate stuff was unverified and leaked Would you say the same if that stuff was censored?
- jtbayly 6y ago
  How in the world can anybody dispute this!?! Add WikiLeaks to the list too. People can down vote all they want, but doing so just confirms that the only way to satisfy them is for Twitter to pick sides and apply its rules evenly unfairly on behalf of one political party.
- nautilus12 6y ago
  Exactly!
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
  60 Minutes 2 aired a slanderous story about George Bush based on documents they knew were unverified. And, the timing is not suspicious it is politics.
daveevad 6y ago
> their policy to remove unverified & leaked personal correspondence do you think their policy is evenly applied across their platform?
- hackinthebochs 6y ago
  Of course not. But how could it possibly be applied evenly? That's not an expectation anyone could genuinely hold.
dexen 6y ago
Those weren't hacked or leaked. The story is much simpler, and the provenance of the files is not in question: By falsely claiming the records were hacked, rather than the legal property of the repair shop following payment default by Hunter Biden, Twitter is itself deliberately spreading false information to justify its illegal election interference. [1] -- [1] https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1316484977928941570 https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1316484977928941570
- kthxbye123 6y ago
  The provenance of the files is not questioned by far-right political operatives like Sean Davis who are pushing this story in the first place, but to anybody with half a brain cell and an ounce of skepticism the whole story stinks. Just listen to this interview with the owner of the repair shop these files purportedly came from, who changes his story about a half-dozen times in the span of sixty minutes: 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... It's not even clear that it was Hunter who dropped off the laptops in the first place!
  - dexen 6y ago
    I hear your objection. Here is a fair and balanced coverage of the document's provenance by a 3rd party, uninvolved, newspaper: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8841255/Man-Hunter-Bidens-emails-Trump-voter-say-told-FBI-came-him.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8841255/Man-Hunter-...
    - kthxbye123 6y ago
      This is a joke, right? The Daily Mail?
      - dexen 6y ago
        My pick - Daily Mail: a newspaper headquartered in London, UK - a 3rd party country, independent from the ongoing US election. Over 120 years long history of investigative journalism. Your pick - The Daily Beast: a 12 years old opinion website in USA, directly interested in the ongoing US election. Compare and contrast the opening - your choice focused on "character assassination" via conspiracy theory; my source focused on giving a broad background & overview as facts. The difference in quality of reporting is palpable.
blhack 6y ago
Did twitter censor all stories regarding the claim that Trump paid $750 in taxes? In case the point I’m making isn’t obvious: the NYT never published their source for that, and still haven’t. If twitter is removing stories for having dubious sources, then that story should not pass muster either. If they’re removing stories for having “hacked” (or in the case of both this story about Hunter Biden, or Trumps taxes: “leaked”) sources, then discussion of BOTH of these stories should be banned.
- rabuse 6y ago
  Exactly, and it's now spouted as a "fact" in multiple online communities I frequent.
- srtjstjsj 6y ago
  That's a bizarre comparison, because Trump has repeatedly lies about being willing but unable to release his own copy of his tax returns. And the NY Times didn't publish personal documents, they published facts about a certain class of personal documents (tax documents of a Presidential candidate) which for decades have been considered public information by all major corners of the political arena.
  - blhack 6y ago
    How did the NyTimes get those tax documents?
rhino369 6y ago
The media commonly relies on second hand accounts of leaked documents ("persons familiar with the contents of [X] document"), including private documents. Something like this has never been censored before. It's not like they are taking down a post from a nobody. The NY Post is a major publication. It's twitter saying they know better than the NY Post. That is a major step that I don't think has ever been taken before.
JungleGymSam 6y ago
So sayeth Arthanos!
ballenf 6y ago
Been years since I read anything from National Review, so I was surprised to see them called a "conservative wing-nut website". Even the wikipedia entry for them seems to counter that assessment pretty strongly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Review
- treeman79 6y ago
  Any agreement with conservative principles will get you labeled as a bunch of unpleasant things. Balanced budget, smaller government, prolife, personal responsibility, self defense, belief in God. Express support for any of these and you will be attacked.
taxicab 6y ago
Not only that, but IMO context matters here. We are 20 days away from the election. People are standing in lines to vote as we speak. If this was published at any other time (and the material for the story has apparently existed since December) the public and the professional media would have had time to scrutinize it, discuss its shortcomings, etc. But, as Winston Churchill said "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." We can't do that and being complicit in spreading misinformation in the middle of an election is, I'm sure, still a strong memory that social media companies have from the 2016 election. My guess as to how this will go is that it will take a week or two to authoritatively discredit the article, but by then, if left unchecked, the article will have already done its damage. The cynic in me says that the originators of the article already know that there isn't much truth here and that this is the point of releasing it while people are voting.
- nautilus12 6y ago
  Funny how the same logic doesn't apply to the steele dossier :/
  - jdminhbg 6y ago
    Love the downvotes for this. Anyone who thinks for a second that Twitter and FB have some kind of set of principles that this story and only this story have crossed is deluded.
nautilus12 6y ago
How this logic not apply to the steele dossier is beyond me.

free_rms 6y ago

The pentagon papers were unverified and leaked. More recently and less impressively, the entire world of Russia-gate stuff was unverified and leaked Would you say the same if that stuff was censored?

jtbayly 6y ago
How in the world can anybody dispute this!?! Add WikiLeaks to the list too. People can down vote all they want, but doing so just confirms that the only way to satisfy them is for Twitter to pick sides and apply its rules evenly unfairly on behalf of one political party.
nautilus12 6y ago
Exactly!
pnw_hazor 6y ago
60 Minutes 2 aired a slanderous story about George Bush based on documents they knew were unverified. And, the timing is not suspicious it is politics.

daveevad 6y ago

> their policy to remove unverified & leaked personal correspondence do you think their policy is evenly applied across their platform?

hackinthebochs 6y ago
Of course not. But how could it possibly be applied evenly? That's not an expectation anyone could genuinely hold.

dexen 6y ago

Those weren't hacked or leaked. The story is much simpler, and the provenance of the files is not in question: By falsely claiming the records were hacked, rather than the legal property of the repair shop following payment default by Hunter Biden, Twitter is itself deliberately spreading false information to justify its illegal election interference. [1] -- [1] https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1316484977928941570 https://twitter.com/seanmdav/status/1316484977928941570

kthxbye123 6y ago
The provenance of the files is not questioned by far-right political operatives like Sean Davis who are pushing this story in the first place, but to anybody with half a brain cell and an ounce of skepticism the whole story stinks. Just listen to this interview with the owner of the repair shop these files purportedly came from, who changes his story about a half-dozen times in the span of sixty minutes: 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... It's not even clear that it was Hunter who dropped off the laptops in the first place!
- dexen 6y ago
  I hear your objection. Here is a fair and balanced coverage of the document's provenance by a 3rd party, uninvolved, newspaper: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8841255/Man-Hunter-Bidens-emails-Trump-voter-say-told-FBI-came-him.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8841255/Man-Hunter-...
  - kthxbye123 6y ago
    This is a joke, right? The Daily Mail?
    - dexen 6y ago
      My pick - Daily Mail: a newspaper headquartered in London, UK - a 3rd party country, independent from the ongoing US election. Over 120 years long history of investigative journalism. Your pick - The Daily Beast: a 12 years old opinion website in USA, directly interested in the ongoing US election. Compare and contrast the opening - your choice focused on "character assassination" via conspiracy theory; my source focused on giving a broad background & overview as facts. The difference in quality of reporting is palpable.

blhack 6y ago

Did twitter censor all stories regarding the claim that Trump paid $750 in taxes? In case the point I’m making isn’t obvious: the NYT never published their source for that, and still haven’t. If twitter is removing stories for having dubious sources, then that story should not pass muster either. If they’re removing stories for having “hacked” (or in the case of both this story about Hunter Biden, or Trumps taxes: “leaked”) sources, then discussion of BOTH of these stories should be banned.

rabuse 6y ago
Exactly, and it's now spouted as a "fact" in multiple online communities I frequent.
srtjstjsj 6y ago
That's a bizarre comparison, because Trump has repeatedly lies about being willing but unable to release his own copy of his tax returns. And the NY Times didn't publish personal documents, they published facts about a certain class of personal documents (tax documents of a Presidential candidate) which for decades have been considered public information by all major corners of the political arena.
- blhack 6y ago
  How did the NyTimes get those tax documents?

rhino369 6y ago

The media commonly relies on second hand accounts of leaked documents ("persons familiar with the contents of [X] document"), including private documents. Something like this has never been censored before. It's not like they are taking down a post from a nobody. The NY Post is a major publication. It's twitter saying they know better than the NY Post. That is a major step that I don't think has ever been taken before.

JungleGymSam 6y ago

So sayeth Arthanos!

ballenf 6y ago

Been years since I read anything from National Review, so I was surprised to see them called a "conservative wing-nut website". Even the wikipedia entry for them seems to counter that assessment pretty strongly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Review https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Review

treeman79 6y ago
Any agreement with conservative principles will get you labeled as a bunch of unpleasant things. Balanced budget, smaller government, prolife, personal responsibility, self defense, belief in God. Express support for any of these and you will be attacked.

taxicab 6y ago

Not only that, but IMO context matters here. We are 20 days away from the election. People are standing in lines to vote as we speak. If this was published at any other time (and the material for the story has apparently existed since December) the public and the professional media would have had time to scrutinize it, discuss its shortcomings, etc. But, as Winston Churchill said "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." We can't do that and being complicit in spreading misinformation in the middle of an election is, I'm sure, still a strong memory that social media companies have from the 2016 election. My guess as to how this will go is that it will take a week or two to authoritatively discredit the article, but by then, if left unchecked, the article will have already done its damage. The cynic in me says that the originators of the article already know that there isn't much truth here and that this is the point of releasing it while people are voting.

nautilus12 6y ago
Funny how the same logic doesn't apply to the steele dossier :/
- jdminhbg 6y ago
  Love the downvotes for this. Anyone who thinks for a second that Twitter and FB have some kind of set of principles that this story and only this story have crossed is deluded.

nautilus12 6y ago

How this logic not apply to the steele dossier is beyond me.