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Twitter and Facebook's action over Joe Biden article reignites bias claims

• uncoder0 6y ago
  To add to this Trump's official campaign Twitter had it's account locked this morning and a video Trump uploaded was promptly deleted. This is new information from today. The thread yesterday was about the initial wave of censorship. I posted about the new actions this morning but it got flagged as a dupe of yesterday's discussion. It was not a duplicate, Twitter has taken new action and decided to go further this morning than they did yesterday.
  • wesleywt 6y ago
    Do you think its correct to delibrately spread a false story about Hunter Biden? Is this type removing false information censorship?
    • uncoder0 6y ago
      Is the story demonstrably false? I don't know if that is the case. It's certainly a smear story. In the past they've fact-checked Tweets from the President and his party but, I've not yet seen them straight up delete them and lock their accounts until now.
      • tt433 6y ago
        I mean knowing what we know about Rudy and his technology abilities, it's not that difficult for me to dismiss anything he or related cronies suggest out of hand.
        • uncoder0 6y ago
          I agree, Rudy Giuliani has spread quite a bit of disinfo over the past 4 years. The claim here that is supposedly supported by a receipt is that Hunter left the computer at a repair shop and never paid the bill. In adherence with the store contract they took ownership of the laptop after some time. When they looked at the hard drive they thought they saw illegal activity and turned it into the FBI after making a clone of the drives which is what Rudy claims he has.
          • isleyaardvark 6y ago
            If Rudy was not behind the last October surprise he was at least in the loop — he openly boasted about having advance knowledge of the Comey letter.
        • jungletime 6y ago
          Did Rudy fake the Hunter Biden with a crack pipe photos too? Its ridiculous since they impeached Trump over asking Ukraine to investigate this corruption. When it was probably true all along.
          • conception 6y ago
            No, they impeached Trump for withholding aid illegally if they didn’t help him by investigating if there might be something there to aid Trumps campaign.
      • bananabreakfast 6y ago
        Yes. Yes it is. This is blatant disinformation meant to destabilize the election and disenfranchise voters with blatant lies. This action is exactly the kind of thing everyone blamed social media for not taking last time and they're finally doing the right thing. This is exactly what they tried to do in the 2016 election by getting Comey to announce a new investigation that, surprise, turned up absolutely nothing. There is no substance to these allegations. At all. Before you get up in arms about a slippery slope about arbiters of truth keep in mind that these sources have burned any credibility they have. Their ideas do not have a right to a fair trail in the public discourse because they are all acting in bad faith.
        • almost_usual 6y ago
          Well Twitter just poured jet fuel on the fire now that they locked the account deleted the tweet and now it’s back on Twitter.
          • refurb 6y ago
            That’s the amazing thing. The NYPost article was making the rounds Wednesday night and it was mostly crickets. Twitter bans any posts about it and now it’s taking off like a firestorm.
        • zalkota 6y ago
          No, it’s not fake. You can’t provide proof that it’s fake. You’re going off a political agenda. There’s a picture of hunter smoking a crack pipe!
          • uncoder0 6y ago
            To preface my comment, I think using Hunter's drug problem for political gain is tasteless. Despite that I find it abhorrent that Twitter is not allowing users to post the photo instead it is instantly causing accounts to get locked. https://twitter.com/search?q=hunter%20locked%20pipe&src=typed_query&f=live https://twitter.com/search?q=hunter%20locked%20pipe&src=type...
          • 6y ago
      • bduerst 6y ago
        It's not demonstrably proven, despite being easy to do so. NY Post doxxed their own source when put under scrutiny, who went on to do an interview yesterday. What John Paul Mac Isaac is saying isn't adding up. 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...
        • luckylion 6y ago
          > It's not demonstrably proven, despite being easy to do so. In that case, all articles that include "sources say" etc should be banned from Twitter, shouldn't they?
          • bduerst 6y ago
            News orgs do that to protect the anonymity of sources. In this case, NY Post threw their source to the wolves when they couldn't verify any of the information, so this story is not congruent with "sources say".
        • save_ferris 6y ago
          > Throughout the interview, Mac Isaac switched back and forth from saying he reached out to law enforcement after viewing the files in the laptop to saying that it was actually the Federal Bureau of Investigation that contacted him. At one point, Mac Isaac claimed that he was emailing someone from the FBI about the laptop. At another point he claimed a special agent from the Baltimore office had contacted him after he alerted the FBI to the device’s existence. At another point, he said the FBI reached out to him for “help accessing his drive.” He can’t get something as simple as who initiated contact over the device straight? If I was a small fish about to source a story of this size, I’d have every single detail rehearsed and committed to memory. This guy doesn’t come across as legit at all.
      • ses1984 6y ago
        Is it possible to demonstrably prove false a made up falsehood? What if I accuse someone of something, and then post that I accused them. The accusation maybe bogus but the post is technically not false.
        • Fellshard 6y ago
          That is the type of laundering language Twitter itself uses regularly in its 'Trending' tab editorializing: 'People angry at X', 'X accused', etc. Pre-framing a topic is malpractice.
        • stvswn 6y ago
          This is often the nature of stories in the public interest. No one ever proved a single portion of Christine DeBlasey Ford's accusations against Brett Kavanaugh but the fact that she was making the accusations were newsworthy enough. In this case, the following are true: (1) Hunter Biden was a highly paid board member of Burisma while his father handled Ukraine policy for the U.S. (2) A computer repair store owner claims to have his data and to have given it to Rudy Giuliani (3) There was a Grand Jury summons to seize the computer as evidence in an unknown investigation. This is far more than is usually needed to cover a story.
          • CyberDildonics 6y ago
            I think it was more about the fact that she was making credible accusations.
            • deleted 6y ago
              [deleted]
      • _a40s 6y ago
        It seems that the Biden campaign isn't denying that the emails are authentic. That would be strong evidence that they are, assuming this hasn't changed in the last 24 hours: https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1316461339842289664 https://twitter.com/lhfang/status/1316461339842289664 For what it's worth, NY Post (sorry for the link) is reporting that the Biden campaign isn't denying most of their claims: https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/notice-biden-campaign-not-denying-posts-scoop-facts-on-hunter-bidens-sleaze/ https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/notice-biden-campaign-not-deny.... To be clear, this is a separate question from how the emails were obtained. That story is beyond weird and surely bogus. To be fair, it also seems to me an indication that Biden is more honest than Trump. Trump would just say the emails were fake whether they were or not.
        • edaemon 6y ago
          The absence of a denial does not at all constitute "strong evidence" of anything.
          • deleted 6y ago
            [deleted]
          • cscurmudgeon 6y ago
            So by default assume anything that goes against your worldview as false and censor it.
            • albedoa 6y ago
              How did you get here from the comment you are replying to.
              • cscurmudgeon 6y ago
                How did you get that I got it from that?
          • _a40s 6y ago
            Of course you're right in a logical or philosophical sense, but in a political sense it certainly does. If the emails were fake, it would be politically insane not to say so. The Biden campaign can easily find this out from Hunter, so the fact that they haven't said it means either that (1) the emails are authentic (though they may still have been altered), or (2) something else is going on that we don't know about and is unusual.
      • DevKoala 6y ago
        How is the story demonstrably false? We have yet to see any counter evidence.
        • TwoBit 6y ago
          Have you read the story about this laptop? While I agree it's not possible from here to prove it's false, it's borderline lunacy and is clearly a fraudulently created attempt to firebomb Biden's campaign at the last minute just like what worked with Hillary last time. The Republicans wouldn't care nearly as much about this story that the FBI itself dropped if they weren't so panicked about losing the election and reaching for yet another vote manipulation tactic.
          • DevKoala 6y ago
            The FBI has the hard drive and they have not denied any of the allegations. Biden’s lawyers haven’t denied the allegations. Biden’s campaign has not denied the authenticity of the emails. Your argument is “I don’t believe it, so it must be false”
    • xlm1717 6y ago
      I think it's not correct. I also think it wasn't correct to deliberately spread a false story about President Trump disrespecting marines, but social media sites didn't take the same precautions with that story.
      • Larrikin 6y ago
        The story was independently verified by pretty much all media sources when followed up by their own journalists
        • anoonmoose 6y ago
          Indeed. If the NYP allows other organizations to review and fact check the primary documents themselves, I'll start to think there's something to this. Otherwise, all I see is that known Trump associates provided info of unknown providence and accuracy to a former Fox News employee now working as a journalist at a Murdoch owned known unreliable news source.
        • uerobert 6y ago
          That “independently verified” part was that they talked with the same source and were told the same thing.
    • rayiner 6y ago
      I think the NY Post is probably getting played. But the media has gotten behind plenty of stories about Trump that turned out to be false: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/horowitz-report-steele-dossier-collusion-news-media-924944 https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/h.... This sloppiness is a general symptom of the need for media organizations to beat the Twitter cycle. The question is whether this standard of reliability is one that they can actually apply evenly. This is a far higher standard that what was pitched. This content moderation was pitched as being limited to Russian bots and “vaccines cause cancer” and the like. Moderating articles from a publicly listed brick and mortar news organization, even if it’s a tabloid, based on the perceived credibility of the underlying facts, is a whole new level. It’s dramatically raising the bar. And maybe that’s where the bar should be, but I absolutely do not believe that Facebook and Twitter have the resources or integrity to apply that high standard fairly.
      • tt433 6y ago
        I think they have the resources but that the corporate model may prevent the resources from being properly distributed (eaten up by executives before getting where they are needed, for example, and who's to say the executives are operating in good faith...)
    • goodluckchuck 6y ago
      The posts should be allowed particularly if they're false. If people are allowed to say true things, then that's not particularly valuable information. However, the content's of someone's lies usually says more than the truth (which can often be obtained elsewhere).
      • lanstin 6y ago
        Why should Twitter be forced to take actions based on your preferences? Make a distributed messaging/publication system and use your power to say what ever you like. Twitter has a lot of power and they are free to use it. The internet wasn’t designed with a winner take all philosophy and the technical infrastructure still supports end user as publisher model.
        • mshumi 6y ago
          So they should be free to be regulated as a publisher despite claiming they are a platform
          • lanstin 6y ago
            Are you saying publishers can’t arbitrarily decide what to publish or not? I think you will find that publishers have a lot more say so over their content than e.g. phone companies.
            • ggreer 6y ago
              Publishers can be as arbitrary as they want, but they are held liable for what they publish. Section 230 gives civil immunity to "information service providers". If someone libels you on Twitter, you can't sue Twitter. But if Twitter starts making editorial decisions as to what is fit to publish and what isn't, then they could lose their section 230 protections and open themselves to tons of lawsuits.
              • messick 6y ago
    • svrb 6y ago
      The Biden campaign explicitly did not dispute that the emails are real when asked (only that the meeting mentioned in the emails took place, which is... an odd distinction). Twitter does not claim that the emails aren't real. In short, the emails are real and everyone admits this... except the people who have fallen for social media giants' propaganda in this case. Twitter claims that the justification is that the emails are "hacked" and/or "leaked" (they're inconsistent), even though (1) this is patently false since they were found on a hard drive which became property of the repair shop; and (2) Twitter has no problem with, say, Trump's tax returns and other "hacked"/"leaked" materials.
    • jungletime 6y ago
      Just curious, what do you make of the Biden photos with a crack pipe found on the laptop too. Are those fake? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8842709/Joe-Bidens-son-crack-pipe-new-low-dirtiest-election-writes-TOM-LEONARD.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8842709/Joe-Bidens-...
      • tw04 6y ago
        Do you have any proof they came from the laptop and not a hacked icloud account or insert many other possible sources? Pretty obvious the guy who claimed to have obtained the laptop is fabricating the whole story: 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...
        • jungletime 6y ago
          For all I know the laptop could have been teleported by aliens into Rudy's greasy ass. Still would be irrelevant on the merit of any of the facts.
          • anoonmoose 6y ago
            Hunter smoking crack is 1) not news and 2) not relevant to the current election. If that was all that was released, we wouldn't be talking about this right now. Everything else in the release is 1) far more damaging than the above and 2) far harder to verify as accurate with what we've been given thus far.
            • colordrops 6y ago
              So we censor everything that is not news and not relevant to the current election? What are you trying to say?
              • anoonmoose 6y ago
                I'm trying to say that right now, as far as I'm concerned, there are only a few confirmed facts. One of those facts is that there are newly released pictures of Hunter smoking crack, which isn't particularly interesting. All the other stuff about emails, provenance of said emails, etc., has not been verified by anyone but the NYP, who, contrary to typical reporting practices, are not sharing their info so other venues can confirm the accuracy. So, as far as I am concerned, that is unverified and quite likely inaccurate info and Twitter and Facebook has no responsibility to disseminate unverified and quite likely inaccurate info.
    • stvswn 6y ago
      The provenance of the documents is fishy. They could have easily been hacked. But, what portions of the actual story are false? The Biden campaign's refutation was not to say that the emails were doctored. They only said that they have checked the official schedule of Joe Biden from the day in question and there is no mention of a meeting with the Burisma executive (they don't say categorically that he did not meet with him, just that it is not present on the official schedule). Other then the meeting w/ Biden, I'm not sure there's a detail that has been specfically contested.
      • lanstin 6y ago
        Your priors are wrong - the evidence and the people presenting it have the burden of proof not the people saying this is more bullshit from a desperate group of people who have consistently lied for years.
        • stvswn 6y ago
          What burden of proof are you talking about? You're saying that a burden of proof needs to be met before what, exactly? I am not saying they have met a burden of proof, I'm saying that we don't censor news articles (even sensational or thinly sourced ones) because they haven't yet met a burden of proof.
          • lanstin 6y ago
            A group well known for lying is pushing a story with poor provenance and you are engaging it as if it has a decent probability of being true. That is a sign your prior belief of the lying people is off - with the more realistic prior belief that liars keep lying the question is why this made up story now? Or how did they execute this lie? And yes, the key to using the internet effectively is to filter things out that are garbage. I individually try not waste my time on bullshit, truth based organizations filter out a lot of crackpots: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.20190201b/full/ https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.2019020... and Twitter itself is free to try to do this filtering as well. I applaud them for trying to remove BS rather than trying to push addictive content but whatever. This very news site is interesting because they spend a lot of time trying to filter BS in favor of productive and informative conversations.
    • calimac 6y ago
      The guy has a crack pipe in his mouth and emails pertaining to foreign influence peddling. Before some of your heads explode please replace the name hunter Biden in the m headline with someone like Jared Cushner? How partisan is the lease of logic?
    • beervirus 6y ago
      >false Citation very much needed.
    • DeonPenny 6y ago
      How can you say its false. The FBI took it seriously. If we said the same about wikileaks or trump taxes we'd all flip out. Twitter shouldn't be the people who get to say whats false or not.
      • TwoBit 6y ago
        and the FBI dropped it. This stunt is so obviously an attempt to manipulate the election at the last minute. Just like they did in 2016. That's really what the media companies are internally considering here: attempts at election fraud. I can imagine a dystopian future in which three weeks before every election there's an explosion of insane bombshell claims about the candidates, with ever increasing effort put into them and no time to refute them before the vote. A misinformation arms war will ensue.
        • DeonPenny 6y ago
          What you talking about thats been a thing since before the internet was a thing is called the October surpise. Its allowed. It's legal. Youre not allowed to suppress your political opponent in the last moment cause that could escalate to poisoning like in other countries or worse.
    • 6nf 6y ago
      It’s not false though. Yes it’s censorship.
    • joejoeshabadoo5 6y ago
      You sound like a huge faggot.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• 12xo 6y ago
  Censorship is when the government, not private enterprises, stifle speech. When it a private entity, it’s called free market. This is a difficult concept for whiners to accept.
  • 12xo 6y ago
    So they downvote instead... lol
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • commandlinefan 6y ago
    Actually, the title refers to it as "bias" rather than "censorship". "free market" is a larger concept than "bias", although you can be biased while still operating within the context of a free market. Still, censorship doesn't have anything to do with the government, although the U.S. explicitly forbids government censorship.
    • 12xo 6y ago
      You mean bias like Rush Limbaugh or FoxNews bias? Where other ideas are not only never presented, they are openly mocked? And that happens mind you, on the PUBLICLY OWNED airwaves and spectrum....
      • inglor_cz 6y ago
        "airwaves and spectrum.... " If we really start considering media, a lot of taxpayer money worldwide went to broadband Internet infrastructure, so Twitter and friends do not play on a completely private field either.
        • 12xo 6y ago
          Ignorance is not a virtue. Learn about the history of American broadcast media and congressional oversight and get back to me...
• dragonwriter 6y ago
  Anyone remember how Twitter was giving Trump a pass for gross and flagrant violations of it's overt rules, then responded to the ongoing outcry over that by changing the rules to officially give a pass to any user it deemed sufficiently politically connected? Live by Twitter favoritism,...
  • tt433 6y ago
    I think both Facebook and Twitter have realized their shenanigans over the past 4 years might look bad in a new government's view
• vinhboy 6y ago
  In the first post about this, people were like, how come they didn't do this to the Democrats in 2016.. Uhhh because they were not taking ANY aggressive actions in 2016 against anyone, that's why we are here. They are trying to correct a wrong. I applaud them for trying. Also it's unfair to say they are doing this for political favoritism. Democratic politicians are the loudest ones calling for their breakup, ie. Bernie, AOC, Warren. Reading this story without understanding the entire political landscape is as dangerous as the misinformation itself.
  • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    > Democratic politicians are the loudest ones calling for their breakup, ie. Bernie, AOC, Warren. Incidents like this may make Republicans a lot more interested in breaking up Facebook and Twitter...
    • lanstin 6y ago
      If the populace as a whole thinks large corporations have too much power and want to spread the power out more, that’s certainly a coherent position. Run your email servers and lobby for anti-trust suits. The internet can certainly support a distributed model.
      • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        Well, I was thinking of it more as politicians playing politics than as them caring about what the populace as a whole thinks. But certainly we can handle a distributed model. There's plenty of people who think it would work better (socially, not just technically).
  • naiveprogrammer 6y ago
    Instead of blaming fake news and misinformation for the 2016 elections outcome, maybe the Democrats should look themselves in the mirror. I have yet to see a clear decisive causation link between the Russian interference (e.g. bot farms) and the outcome of the election. Of course there was interference, nobody denies it. But show me that these trolls swayed the election. There is none.
• tengbretson 6y ago
  I think the key mistake was that the NY Post didn't cite "anonymous sources." That would have made it bulletproof.
  • rhino369 6y ago
    Instead of Guilianni, they could have just said "persons familiar with the contents of the emails."
    • tzs 6y ago
      That or "anonymous sources" wouldn't have helped. That works with papers that have a long earned reputation of mostly reporting facts. They may have biases in their selection of which stories to run, or what angles to approach those stores from, but what they report as a fact is in fact a fact far far far far more often than not. (Pause for people to jump in to cite examples of such papers getting it wrong. This will be the small set of examples that is always cited). The Post is not such a paper.
      • rhino369 6y ago
        Let's see Twitter's list of trusted newspapers. No way such a thing exists.
      • Covzire 6y ago
        Papers with long-earned reputations do themselves tremendous discredit when they hire full blown political activists with no regard for the truth, as the WP, NYT etc have done for at least a decade.
  • benmw333 6y ago
    Serious question - How does that make it legitimate? In our eyes (the viewers) or twitter's terms&cond?
    • mcfly1985 6y ago
      Twitter allows all sorts of garbage claims about Trump from mainstream media sources which simply cite "anonymous sources". Most recently the NYTimes claimed to have Trumps tax returns - without evidence verifying the authenticity. Over the last few years, Russiagate relied almost entirely on "anonymous sources" - and we all know how that turned out.
• convery 6y ago
  European here, but I can definitively see how someone would come to that conclusion. Both platforms bans anyone mentioning the supposed "whistleblower" (whom actually only had newspaper articles as 'evidence'), bans anyone mentioning Bidens kid, bans anyone mentioning the death of Clintons ex-staffers, Wikileaks content related to Dems is blacklisted, and they remove videos of Bidens gaffes for being "manipulative" when it's just clips from livestreams. While no action is taken if you post conspiracies about Reps, fabricated videos of Trump (for humour or propaganda), discredited 'leaks' such as the infamous dossier, that ICE is running concentration-camps and engaging in genocide, or pictures of you vandalising Trump-supporters property. EDIT: Even on HN, a site that usually is for free speech and discussing alternative theories, the posts about bias in tech are near instantly flagged and users praising media companies for removing "bad information" while people not following political narratives get downvoted; seems to indicate larger issues.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • nitrobeast 6y ago
    A few things I realized in the past few years: 1. Elite class does exist in the society, and they exert tight control on the flow of information in traditional media, e.g. TV, newspapaer etc. Their control is loosened in the Internet age initially, which led to the rise of Trump. Trying to correct this, a narrative of blaming "fake news" was used to pressure leading companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter to toe the elite line. 2. Censorship of "effective" speech, which is speech that can reach vast audience, always exists in any society. Just think back about the "mask is useless" than "everyone should wear mask" media campaigns in the in the past few months, on traditional media. Internet weakened the traditional guardians of "effective" speech. With the multiple challenges faced by the elites today, e.g. COVID, class and racial conflicts, disruption to internal orders, the elites are trying harder to take control of important nodes of Internet, so they can build consensus and move the society to a direction they desire.
    • alacombe 6y ago
      > which led to the rise of Trump Trump is just a middle finger to the Democrats woke policies coming from social science university labs and generally more artistic people, which indeed tends to be over representated in the entertainment industry.
• martythemaniak 6y ago
  Most people are pragmatic. Simple, axiomatic principles can be very intellectually appealing (probably more so amongst the STEM-crowd than the general population), if they don't produce good outcomes, they will and should be discarded. In our field we constantly see languages with stronger intellectual foundations (Haskell, Lisp, Scala, Perl6) constantly lose out market share to pragmatic, practical, messy and oftentimes ugly languages/libraries/tookits etc. We often knowingly choose the latter set knowing full well what their downsides are, because we still come out ahead. If you're wondering why someone would support Facebook/Twitter/YouTube's recent moves, it really is that simple. Their foundations don't have to be perfect, or even particularly good or fair. They just have to be better the deluge of toxic sludge that's currently overwhelming these systems. That is to say, there is no answer to the Paradox of Tolerance and you don't need an answer. If you feel people are taking advantage of you, you will (and should) crack down, and if you crack down too much eventually people will (and should) rebel.
  • tomp 6y ago
    Haskell loses because it takes 2000 lines just to write a logging statement. Scala loses because you can’t even write a fast for loop. Lisp loses because it disrespects 100 years of math. I’m exaggerating a bit but not by much.
    • lanstin 6y ago
      I don’t get the lisp thing? I thought lisp lost because of lisp weenies and worse (simple) is better as far as writing maintainable code bases?
      • tomp 6y ago
        Instead of writing 1 + 2 as in mathematics, in Lisp you write (+ 1 2). I'm not sure I get the second statement of yours, but personally I find Clojure in particular very inspiring and amazing, if only it had a better syntax...
• taxicab 6y ago
  The story reeks from top to bottom. The owner of the repair shop that allegedly received the laptop from Biden is a super far right conspiracy theorist. To the point where he literally believes that the Clintons are out to kill him for the information he has [1]. The whole story is that this is Hunter Biden's laptop, but in reality some random dude dropped it off and the owner said that "he had a medical condition that prevented him from actually seeing who dropped off the laptop but that he believed it to be Hunter Biden’s because of a sticker related to the Beau Biden Foundation that was on it." [1]. Then, it gets passed off to Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani back at the start of the year when Guiliani is already trying to get Ukraine to stir up a story on Hunter Biden. They then sit on it for most of the year and release it 20 days before the election. Something like this, even as absurd as it is, will take weeks to thoroughly debunk. Meanwhile, people are literally in lines voting and stuff like this has an effect. That's probably why it was released right now, because even though it's most likely false, by the time it has flown around the internet unimpeded the damage will have already been done. [1] 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...
  • zalkota 6y ago
    Did you see the photos?
  • barnesto 6y ago
    Doesn't matter if the story reeks or not. This is about censorship and even application of "community standards." Twitter has never once censored any of smears or leaks against the Trump campaign. Also, your criteria for this story to reek shows your bias. It's not like Joe Biden himself bragged about getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired with the threat of holding back a billion dollars. It's on video, just Google it. And Hunter Biden is an admitted drug addict. So nothing that has been exposed from that laptop reeks too much. You want to say Hunter was set up? Okay, I'll go down that rabbit hole, but to say this is all false? Well, again, your bias is showing.
    • koolba 6y ago
• sleepysysadmin 6y ago
  Ignore the NYPost for the moment. A US government website put the details on their website. Twitter is now blocking the US government webpage hosting the details. They are blocking actual politicians linking these details. https://twitter.com/CongressmanHice/status/1316741807959572490/photo/1 https://twitter.com/CongressmanHice/status/13167418079595724... Worse yet, they have highlighted the exact opposite story. They are featuring washington post who are calling it false. https://twitter.com/i/events/1316398754883272704 https://twitter.com/i/events/1316398754883272704 I'm not an American. Any Americans want to weigh in on your views of this?
  • jchw 6y ago
    Well, if it is false, then they are performing the stated goal of stopping the spread of “fake news”, which need not discriminate on whether the entity pushing it is associated with a government or not. Whether or not I want Twitter to be an arbiter of truth, some very basic research does seem to make it seem this story is a bit on the order of a conspiracy theory.
    • sleepysysadmin 6y ago
      Just out of curiosity, what is your political persuasion? Do you tend to lean more democrat or republican? >which need not discriminate on whether the entity pushing it is associated with a government or not. I was ignoring the NYPost, to judge action taken by Twitter. Twitter should never ever censor a government website regardless for what it says. >Whether or not I want Twitter to be an arbiter of truth, some very basic research does seem to make it seem this story is a bit on the order of a conspiracy theory. Do you want Twitter to be the arbiter of truth? My usual source of Democrat/Left news is Msnbc. For whatever reason they are not covering the story at all. Can enlighten me on why it seems to be a conspiracy theory?
      • arcatech 6y ago
        The "arbiter of truth" argument is weak. I want the people at Twitter and other platforms to be able to make decisions about whether something is a fact or misinformation. If they get it wrong, fine. We can use other platforms if we don't like the decisions one makes. But I'm tired of the idea that they should NEVER be able to even try to recognize the difference between truth and lies.
• AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  I wonder if Twitter is also going to block links to this BBC article...
• quantummkv 6y ago
  Keep aside the accuracy of the NYPost story for a moment. With this move, Facebook and Twitter have effectively backed one political side over the other. Even if in the nitty-gritty they might not have, this is the perception that is sent out and is the perception that will be played to the hilt by the Trump camp. And timing of this is damning as well, with distrust of big tech and social media rising even before this on all ends of the political spectrum. If by any chance Trump wins next month, this will be the end not only for Facebook and Twitter, but for the wider Internet in general and Social Media in particular. Because if Trump wins, he is not going to let it slide. The destruction of Facebook and Twitter will most certainly done by removing the safe harbors by citing this incident in particular. That will be a bloodbath with a lot casualties of innocent bystanders in Silicon Valley. And the knock-off effects of this will be even more damning. Even if Trump loses, many other countries will take a big, hard look at the possibility of regime change and political interference being done by a bunch of Western Activists. Especially in Asia and Africa, where the memories of Western Imperialism have not yet faded and the wounds are still raw. I am really surprised by the fact that the shareholders, investors and the board of Facebook and Twitter haven't stepped in to stop this or at-least deescalate this, considering they will be loosing a whole lot in this scenario. Or is everyone in Silicon Valley just too drugged out with activism to care about even themselves?
  • mattnewton 6y ago
    I think this is one of the damned if you do, damned if you don’t situations. Twitter and Facebook were largely blamed by traditional media for being a vector of misinformation that harmed the American public in 2016, and suffered a lost of trust then. When they try to combat that, whoever would have benefited from the material being censored will cry fowl, and it was a doomed venture from the start.
    • rightbyte 6y ago
      Russia was blamed, not Twitter or Facebook. They were victims ...
  • throwmeaway_pls 6y ago
• Simulacra 6y ago
  I just don’t get it, what is Twitter so afraid of? It’s already a cesspool of flame wars and misinformation, I’m growing deeply concerned about their need to interject themselves into news stories like this.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • Kneecaps07 6y ago
    The other side is people get mad at them for allowing legitimately fake news to propagate.
  • cowmoo728 6y ago
    I wonder if FB and Twitter are in contact with some of the national intelligence agencies. US intelligence officials talking to NYT suggest that this "leak" is a forgery by the GRU. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/hunter-biden-ukraine-facebook-twitter.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/us/politics/hunter-biden-...
    • goodluckchuck 6y ago
      So, you're listening to the people to said Iraq had WMDs?
      • cowmoo728 6y ago
        I don't take anything the three letter agencies say at face value. But if I were Twitter leadership and legal and I got a call from the CIA or NSC saying my platform is being used right now for a massive GRU disinformation campaign, I would panic and attempt to shut it down.
      • lanstin 6y ago
        No, the Republicans have definitely lost credibility. I think it’s a safe prior that anything a Republican says about weird convoluted plots this close to an election should be discounted.
• generationP 6y ago
  This story, with its --ahem-- questionable provenance and its utter lack of any actual dirt on Joe Biden (as opposed to on Hunter Biden, whom no one already has any illusions about), would be a nothingburger, forgotten after 2 weeks, if not for Twitter and Facebook choosing to die on that hill. And now I guess it won't die down until spring, because even if 90% of media hate Trump, enough of them hate Facebook and/or are worried they're next on the black^H^H^Hocklist. Well played!
• dkackman11 6y ago
  Maybe getting rid of professional journalism, and crowd sourcing the news via secret algorithms, isn't such a great idea after all...
  • zpeti 6y ago
    We as consumers should be valuing real journalism and actually paying money for it. Otherwise this carries on going downhill. Journalism, at least some of it, should not be about clicks and sound bites.
    • turtleturtle 6y ago
      The idea of free journalism sounds great until it's all ad driven and click bait-y. A digital news subscription cost less than $1 daily and it's still a challenge to convince people to commit to one. I'm glad some long form journalists are moving to substack.
      • lanstin 6y ago
        I have subscribed to like seven newspapers this year and i have to say their use of technology is awful. They should get a revenue sharing system like ASCAP for music - I pay so much per year and then they distribute it amongst the sites I view. I only want to check Houston papers when they have flooding but I don’t want them to die out. I only want to read Wilmington paper when they get a hurricane or a spike in Covid cases in the nursing homes, but I can’t see paying $1000 per year for all of the places I click in on from time to time.
    • ravenstine 6y ago
      They don't want this. Most of today's journalists are activists and they want the widest audience possible, whether it pays handsomely or not.
    • clairity 6y ago
      having watched the media landscape over the past two decades, the market for real journalism is apparently small and shrinking. there's not enough such money available to support it at its desired size. "real news" loses to social media because it can't compete on the novelty dopamine feedback loop (otherwise known as popularity): being the first to bring up new info or make a novel comment about it, getting a dopamine hit (esteem), then going back to the trough for more. old journalism is comparatively too slow and sparse at this. so traditional news, seeing the writing on the wall, decided to join the fray instead of being crowded out. this won't change until good journalism can compete for (enough) attention without being subsumed by the social novelty feedback loop. it's not so much about value or even actualizing journalists' activist stances (as others seem to be arguing), but the competitive dynamics of the market they're in.
• high_derivative 6y ago
  Ahhh: 1. We must censor terror propaganda and child abuse to avoid harm & because it's the law 2. We must censor stormfront and the far right because it's the right thing to do 3. We must censor covid misinformation because it could kill people 4. We must selectively censor news reporting for political candidates we are aligned with because it's probably false. ---- we are here now 5. We must remove all news critical of our position . 6. We must actively force people to be re-educated to avoid harm. 7. We must exterminate dangerous elements. The mental gymnastics used to justify this kind of censorship are frightening. Most news is full of inaccuracies and outright lies, from all sources.
  • Ashanmaril 6y ago
    Woke people think they're Galileo but they're really the church The book burning going on lately is insane
    • vharuck 6y ago
      Everyone thinks they're Galileo. Who would ever stay with the side they think is wrong and cruel? History (i.e. future opinions) will assign the labels.
      • inglor_cz 6y ago
        Galileos tend to work alone or almost alone. If someone joins a mob against a single person, odds are that their self-identification as Galileo is ... unsound.
        • dennnis 6y ago
          Yeah.. you don't normally see mob's carrying out justice very well.
        • NineStarPoint 6y ago
          Really, very few people are Galileo in modern America for the reason you listed. There are two massive groups of people against each other much more than there are individuals who almost everyone is against. Much more Red vs White army than Galileo against the Church.
• cirgue 6y ago
  Hot take: they should do more of this, not less. As a medium it’s fundamentally distortionary, what is popular on Twitter is as much a function of the peculiarities of its ranking algorithm as it is of the material significance of the information. The less people trust twitter popularity as an indication of importance, the better off society is, and the more diverse the online media ecosystem can be.
  • Fellshard 6y ago
    Mandating something to be unimportant probably won't have the effect you desire. But allowing them to dig their own hole is probably the best outcome, allowing people to see the consequences for themselves. Hopefully the side effects are not too disastrous in the process.
  • rayiner 6y ago
    The idea that Twitter and Facebook can do this in a “non-distortionary” way is unrealistic. Peoples’ personal biases are too strong. The “fact check” websites used to be great. Now, they wander way over “fact checking.” The worst abuses are when they provide “context” or challenge assumptions. Conservatives and liberals are not working from the same assumptions, and have a different set of contextual facts top of mind on different issues. The fact check organizations are pretty good about checking the actual assertion, but reveal bias through what contextual facts they provide and what assumptions they do or do not challenge. Another way they cross the line is “fact checking” obvious rhetoric: https://www.factcheck.org/2020/10/trumps-exaggerated-claims-on-biden-and-pharma-in-puerto-rico/ https://www.factcheck.org/2020/10/trumps-exaggerated-claims-... > At a rally in Sanford, Florida, President Donald Trump made the exaggerated claim that his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, “voted to obliterate” Puerto Rico’s pharmaceutical manufacturing industry. As Biden would say, “c’mon man.” How many times has a politician said stuff like “they sent your jobs to China?” Did anyone fact check Biden’s assertion that Romney would “put [Black people] back in chains?” They explain the vote by saying things like: “at the time, eliminating the provision was seen as striking a blow against “corporate welfare.” Seen by who? They also note that the bill “also raised the minimum wage.” This isn’t “fact checking,” it’s the counter-narrative from the Biden campaign.
• throwawaysea 6y ago
  Here's a list of various hoaxes/leaks/etc. that the big tech social media companies allowed and did not censor, even though they took action in this instance: https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/15/11-hacks-leaks-and-hoaxes-that-twitter-and-facebook-didnt-throttle-because-they-hurt-trump/ https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/15/11-hacks-leaks-and-hoax... This list seems like strong proof that the we cannot trust these social media companies to be neutral actors. They shouldn't be given controlling power to the digital public square.
• ffggvv 6y ago
  so many stories about trump are later proven to be fake or unsubstantiated such as the russian bounties, that he owes money to russia, the steele dossier etc... and his tax returns were also stolen or hacked yet ofc they aren’t censored
  • colordrops 6y ago
    I hate trump and can't wait for him to disappear but I can still admit that he was unfairly smeared and severely attacked by the media. It just backfires and leads to people not trusting both sides
  • giardini 6y ago
    ffggvv says >"so many stories about trump are later proven to be fake or unsubstantiated such as the russian bounties, that he owes money to russia, the steele dossier etc... and his tax returns were also stolen or hacked"< By now you should understand the Democratic Party's news cycle: a) Make up a message (something, anything bad) and present it to the press as a Presidential abomination, b) Get Democratically-favored media to repeat/embellish the rumour, c) Get Democratic - favoring prosecutors, government spokesmen, bureaucrats, college professors, or outside "experts" to repeat the rumor and to fabricate supporting "evidence", d) Call for investigations in the House of representatives [which the Democrats currently control], e) Ask representatives to go on record to news media concerning the fabricated messages, f) Invoke every right under the sun in support of the false message: e.g., "free speech is being violated", "trial w/o jury", "conspiracy", etc. g)When a new fabrication is concocted, drop the current claims or say they were a Russian or Republican conspiracy, and go to the new fabrication. Never follow-up or complete investigations into past false messages. Rinse, repeat; IOW lie, lie, lie and lie again. Recently Democrats have added to this recipe the following: Bring out the mob, shout and scream, burn down the police station! Every Democrat, from the lowliest Antifa street slug to Nancy Pelosi follows the same formula. They're political thugs who give the Thuggees: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggee a bad name. Why? b/c their behavior will kill entire societies of people and their governments, not merely individuals as did the Thuggees.
    • 6y ago
• zalkota 6y ago
  Here's a list of various hoaxes/leaks/etc. that the big tech social media companies allowed and did not censor, even though they took action in this instance: https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/15/11-hacks-leaks-and-hoax https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/15/11-hacks-leaks-and-hoax... This list seems like strong proof that the we cannot trust these social media companies to be neutral actors. They shouldn't be given controlling power to the digital public square.
  • lanstin 6y ago
    Who thinks any corporation is a neutral actor? And did the government make Twitter popular? The people that use Twitter granted that power as is their right. The people are free to setup decentralized publication systems if that is better. Twitter doesn’t really owe you an explanation of the different standard they use at different times.
    • verroq 6y ago
      Ah but Twitter claims to be a neutral actor [0]. How dare we uphold it to its own standards. [0]. For the purposes of section 230
      • triceratops 6y ago
        For the 500 millionth time, section 230 says absolutely nothing about impartiality. And about moderation all it says is "Do as much as you like, even more than the government requires. You won't be liable." Seriously, actually go read section 230 instead of relying on Internet commenters to tell you what it is.
        • juniper_strong 6y ago
          To me, "It is the policy of the United States ... to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families, and schools who use the Internet and other interactive computer services" implies impartiality, as does the description of the internet as, among other things, "a forum for a true diversity of political discourse". Companies that control what information users can receive in order to allow only one side of a political discourse are in opposition to the policies being implemented in section 230.
• ffggvv 6y ago
  i remember during the BLM Riots, we had stories going around that jacob blake was just "breaking up a fight" between two women. when it turns out he had just finished robbing someone he'd previously sexually assaulted with her kids in the house. and twitter let it trend i remember they had a video of gunshot sounds trending with a description saying that an innocent 16 year old girl was shot by police when in reality it was an armed 30 year old man who had just killed someone else. i think its finally time to #deleteTwitter
  • verroq 6y ago
    You might as well delete most liberal media as well since anytime they mention a crime being committed and they omit the race of the perp you can assume they aren’t white. If they are white they will shout it from the rooftops. I watched Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine and I’d assume that for some reason these journalists thought that they can fix racism just not mentioning the race of the perpetrators.
    • pqhwan 6y ago
      I haven’t seen what you’ve seen, so I’m not going to deny your experience/impression, but my opinion is that the only case where the races of those involved in a crime matter are when the crime is racially motivated. And that’s the standard I’ve seen major media adhere to, but obviously there’s grey areas. If you want every crime tallied up against the race of the perpetrator, I’ve got bad news for you; that’s what the kids are talking about when they take to the streets against good ol’ racism, my friend.
      • hackerfromthefu 6y ago
        Well I am not going to deny your experience/impression, but my opinion is that news is valuable to the degree it has actionable information that is accurate. e.g. Knowing which areas are more likely to be dangerous means I can avoid those areas. If an area is regularly the site of dangerous altercations, I know to be more careful around it. But if the news white-washes that actual factual information it becomes much less useful as actual actionable information.
• oxymoran 6y ago
  Election meddling is a little more than bias.
  • pcmoney 6y ago
    I don't understand why this is so controversial. You cannot reveal personal details of someone on Twitter (email, phone number etc.) The article contained unreacted personal info so should be blocked. You also cannot link directly to hacked/obtained without consent material on twitter. The article contained screenshot of the material so should be blocked. You CAN link to material that discusses hacked/obtained without consent material on Twitter as long as it does not contain the material. eg. Trump Tax Return story by NYT.
    • djsumdog 6y ago
      Tax returns are an interesting case, because even revealing that information could constitute a federal crime. You also can't reveal someone's protected medical information (HIPPA) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrvYNfsAgJY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrvYNfsAgJY
• gok 6y ago
  It's frustrating Twitter and Facebook won't just say the truth: "This is a blatant attempt at disinformation by politicians who have repeatedly attacked our employees, and we don't want it. It's our web site, stop trying to tell us what our own rules are. Go spread your nonsense somewhere else. If you think this is a 230 violation sue us."
  • CivBase 6y ago
    Reading through these HN comments, it is amazing to me how many people have already concluded the NY Post story is either obviously true or false. But I agree with the gist of your point. Social media platforms should stop pretending to be unbiased disinformation watchmen. It's their platform and they don't have to justify squat. If people want free speech, they can go somewhere else. On that note, I really do think distributed social media networks are the future.
    • gok 6y ago
      Let us ignore the question of whether or the story is true. Twitter and Facebook clearly think it is false.
    • realmod 6y ago
      The contradictory statements by the so-called shop owner, who provided the emails, and the past behavior of Guiliani all points towards it very likely being false. And them holding this information until 3 weeks before the election points, after having it for over a year, further points it to being false informations. And the nail in the coffin is the simple fact that they decided to release a PDF-image of the emails instead of simply giving the raw email with its metadata which would allow us to instantaneously confirm it. Literally all they have to do is post the metadata.
      • serial_dev 6y ago
        > And them holding this information until 3 weeks before the election points, after having it for over a year, further points it to being false informations. While I'm not arguing whether the allegations are true or not, I don't think timing your most valuable opposition research findings makes things automatically false. And in my opinion, these huge platforms that are basically monopolies should not be censoring things based on whether they think something is true or false. It's tempting to believe that every issue is either clearly true or clearly false, in most fields that is not the case and I don't want @jack deciding what's "safe" for me to see.
• pcmoney 6y ago
  I don't understand why this is so controversial. You cannot reveal personal details of someone on Twitter (email, phone number etc.) The article contained unreacted personal info so should be blocked. You also cannot link directly to hacked/obtained without consent material on twitter. The article contained screenshot of the material so should be blocked. You CAN link to material that discusses hacked/obtained without consent material on Twitter as long as it does not contain the material. eg. Trump Tax Return story by NYT.
  • nkurz 6y ago
    This is a reasonable enough comment, but adding it four times into the thread makes it spam. Please delete some of the copies.
    • pcmoney 6y ago
      Having a bunch of replies on the thread that don't bother to read the terms of use or the explanation of the ban is spam as well. Spam fighting spam? Spamalot?
• deanCommie 6y ago
  Twitter and Facebook: Spreading garbage right wing conspiracies about Clinton Assassinations, Pizzagate Child Porn, Obama Terrorism connections, and so on for the better part of a decade, and actively contributing to influencing the 2016 election through rampant misinformation Hackernews: <CRICKETS> Twitter: Blocks ONE similarly garbage smear piece by a political administration that has no qualms with completely lying to the entire world in every sense of hte word Hackernews: CENSORSHIP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You. Are. All. RIDICULOUS.
  • tomhoward 6y ago
    People on HN have been up in arms about all those topics since they appeared. Maybe it was that the discussions got so inflammatory and repetitive they ended up getting flamed/flagged off the front page before you saw them. But if you do a few searches (in the box at the bottom of each page) like I just did, you'll find plenty.
• xenadu02 6y ago
  Why is everyone accepting the unstated assumption: that a child's actions (if the dubious allegations were true) should reflect on the parent? Corruption of blood is even prohibited by the Constitution and for good reason. Eve if Hunter Biden did something wrong that doesn't really have anything to do with Joe Biden. There also isn't even a tiny hint that Joe Biden's position on Russia vs Ukraine has changed at any point. Is Trump liable for everything his kids say and do? Or the obvious influence peddling they're doing right now? The whole premise of this is to smear someone by familial association. So in that light it's garbage from the start. In my mind the connection to Giuliani makes it even more likely to be entirely fabricated, but taken at face value it's a worthless conspiracy theory story clearly dropped at the last minute to attempt to sway the election.
• inglor_cz 6y ago
  This is the Streisand effect in practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect Here in Czechia we mostly concentrate on our outrageous Covid numbers of late, but this story about Twitter pulling down a NY Post article made it through into our local news. If it stayed up, no one would have cared enough to write about it.
  • intrasight 6y ago
    Exactly - blocking it just brought it to the front page.
    • tootie 6y ago
      You're assuming Twitter's intent is to bury the story. Their intent is to not be involved or liable.
      • partiallypro 6y ago
        But they are explicitly not liable, that's why their position makes no sense...in fact their curation/censorship for this news event could make them liable for -other- posts that are completely unrelated. One of my takes is that Twitter leadership is completely incompetent. Facebook didn't censor the story completely, Twitter did. Twitter is arguably one of the most valuable (if not the most valuable) platforms for news in the entire world...yet they can barely make any money. This isn't the first time Twitter has massively botched something so simple. It really comes down to a detached CEO, and incompetent leadership.
        • tootie 6y ago
          They may not be legally liable but they are desperately trying to avoid alienating too many users by being party to questionable actions. A client of mine recently asked to divest from Cloudflare because they have the Proud Boys as a customer. As much as Cloudflare has no legal obligation to police the content they host, customers can vote with their feet.
• jungletime 6y ago
  @Jack thinks China is going to win the war, and already picking sides. There are reasons why being Neutral is a bad option, if you read Machiavelli. "Do not be Neutral" https://www.obtaineudaimonia.com/do-not-be-neutral-prince-niccolo-machiavelli https://www.obtaineudaimonia.com/do-not-be-neutral-prince-ni...
  • rtx 6y ago
    That's why this election is so important. It will chart our paths for next 100 years.
    • codecrusade 6y ago
      China invasion of US. Sad.
      • waterheater 6y ago
        China wants to, yes, primarily because they can't sustain their population with the farmland they presently have. However, I am quite interested to watch the PLA--whose soldiers died of starvation three weeks into a battle with Vietnamese peasants--stare eye-to-eye with not just the US military but literally hundreds of millions of gun barrels.
        • MH15 6y ago
          You do realize how insane it is to cheer for war? A PLA invasion of the US is not "interesting", it's horrifying.
          • waterheater 6y ago
            Where do you see that I want war with the PRC to happen?
        • maxlamb 6y ago
          primarily because they can't sustain their population with the farmland they presently have. Source? Why would all of a sudden China not be able to sustain its population with the current farmland?
• sangnoir 6y ago
  Why is everyone ignoring @jack's official explanation for why Twitter blocked the specific link from being shared? This is the one falsifiable action Twitter clearly took. Twitters official policy is to not allow publication of hacked material or information with Personally Identifying Information - and this material was hacked and had unredacted personal email addresses. I haven't seen any reasonable arguments against these policies, instead I've seen nebulous accusations of biased censorship. Twitter is clearly okay with the discussion of these emails - no hashtags or keywords are being suppressed: it was a link to a single story that was blocked since it violated stated policy. Incidentally, the NYT reports that the US intelligence community heard chatter of the GRU using hacked Burisma emails as an October surprise before the NY Post story broke (a trick so nice, they had to do it twice). I guess no one cares for facts anymore, as long as they see patterns that fit their preconceptions
  • rayiner 6y ago
    If this is hacked emails, doesn’t that prove the article is credible?
    • sangnoir 6y ago
      I'd say the article is self-consistent, but not necessarily credible. I don't think "hack" means literal network intrusion. If the article's own description of the provenance of the information is taken at face value, cloning a hard drive at a repair shop without authorization still qualifies as "hacked", and in violation of Twitter terms.
      • Karunamon 6y ago
        The "authorization" is provided by the owner of the laptop, which is legally the owner of the shop, since whoever dropped the machine off signed a contract indicating as much.
        • whatusername 6y ago
          Surely you provide authorization to perform a data recovery but not to share the data with the media?
• cosmiccatnap 6y ago
  https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
• interlocutor 6y ago
  Societal attitudes towards free speech have changed a lot in recent times. I believe this is related to technological advancement and the rise of social media. The advent of social media has made it too easy to spread dangerous levels of hate and false information online. Malicious individuals and groups now have the power to reach hundreds of millions instantly, at no cost to themselves. It started off innocently enough, with cat videos uploaded to YouTube, but soon extremists were taking advantage of social media for radicalization purposes, adversarial nations were spreading fake news to influence who gets elected, and others were even live-streaming mass murders. This has caused an upheaval in attitudes towards free speech. Enough is enough! There needs to be limits. Communities started imposing limits to free speech. Society — as opposed to governments — have decided that some censorship is in order. This is a natural evolution of societal norms. This particular evolution was a reaction to the excesses and abuses seen in social media. Some censorship, by private parties such as Twitter, as opposed to absolute free speech, will be the new normal. We live in a new world; the old norms no longer apply.
  • colordrops 6y ago
    The idea that speech should have limits was driven by the same think tanks that spread the lies and propaganda on social media. You are being played on both sides. The establishment is threatened by free speech since it is now accessible to everyone so they are painting it as dangerous.
  • djsumdog 6y ago
    So these individuals are malicious and misleading, but what you believe is pure and good and right and holy? How do you know you're not the one being deceived or are believing a lie? The freedom of speech allows people to talk about things that might be true, but unpopular. > have decided that some censorship is in order Freedom of speech is not absolute. It doesn't include images of child abuse, lying to Federal Agents, lying under oath before a Court or Congress, or speech that advocates for immediate and imminent harm of a person. Those seem like decent limit breaks. Americas freedom of speech is very strong, stronger than German, Australia, the UK, NZ .. the US and Japan probably have the strongest free speech laws in the world (although Japan's is crippled by insane copyright law, which is another mess). People who are on the wrong side of history, rarely know or realize it, while they're in it. Free speech is about acknowledging someone else could be right and you might be wrong.
• jorblumesea 6y ago
  If you run a service like Twitter or Facebook, you just can't win. Your systems are being gamed by huge nation states with almost unlimited budgets. Your services are being used to spread disinformation and propaganda under "free speech". People also assume that, not only do they have a right to read this disinformation, but also a right for it to be broadcasted and amplified. If you block these sources, people hate you. If you allow them to exist, people hate you and you might destabilize elections and democracies. What a terrible position to be in.
  • 8note 6y ago
    If it were terrible, they wouldn't be doing it. I imagine the billions of dollars make it quite pleasent
• SirensOfTitan 6y ago
  David Foster Wallace on “Politically Correct English” in the essay, “Authority and American Usage” (particularly note the sentence on censorship): “ There's a grosser irony about Politically Correct English. This is that PCE purports to be the dialect of progressive reform but is in fact--in its Orwellian substitution of the euphemisms of social equality for social equality itself--of vastly more help to conservatives and the US status quo than traditional SNOOT prescriptions ever were. Were I, for instance, a political conservative who opposed using taxation as a means of redistributing national wealth, I would be delighted to watch PC progressives spend their time and energy arguing over whether a poor person should be described as "low-income" or "economically disadvantaged" or "pre-prosperous" rather than constructing effective public arguments for redistributive legislation or higher marginal tax rates. [...] In other words, PCE acts as a form of censorship, and censorship always serves the status quo.”
• Tallasatree 6y ago
  The road to hell is paved with good intentions. We've been watching this happen for a few years now, and some of us are actively paving the road.
  • 2bitencryption 6y ago
    Recently I've seen people invoking the term "slippery slope fallacy" to describe this phenomenon. It's really frustrating to see this. I think there was some stupid "list of fallacies" infographic popular on Reddit a few months back that spawned this notion that there's no such thing as a "slippery slope" and calling anything a "slippery slope" means you're wrong and your argument can be tossed out. But... that's exactly how rights are eroded. It is, in the purest sense, a slippery slope of gradual change. I'm not sure how I feel about this specific instance (the Twitter/Biden thing) but I think the "slippery slope fallacy" fallacy is relevant here.
    • nexuist 6y ago
      It is stupid especially considering that the people who are for this sort of censorship (or moderation, if you will) usually also agree with the notion that we are heading towards fascism. Which one is it then? Is it possible to take on step forward and stay put, or does every step forward indicate more steps in the future? You can't have it both ways, it's either a fallacy or not. History tells us that it is not a fallacy, and that we should use all the warning signs we can find before it's too late to go back.
    • hnhg 6y ago
      Indeed, when done on purpose, it has another name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salami_slicing
    • colordrops 6y ago
      "slippery slope" is not a fallacy. It happens all the time. It happened with privacy. Do you not remember when a printer driver phoning home with usage stats was a national news story? Now you are a a bad company if you don't do this.
• scop 6y ago
  Replace "Hunter Biden" with "Donald Trump Jr". Under that circumstance, does Twitter & FB censor the story?
• prudhvis 6y ago
  I have no idea what happened during the early 2010s. I grew up during the late 90s (born in late 80s) learning about the internet and its philosophies. Allowing Free speech still is the hill I'd like to die on. But the new generation of people, even here on HN and the internet hacker personalities I used to align with have turned so pro-censorship that I don't believe I'm in a proper reality/timeline anymore.
  • wutbrodo 6y ago
    I think this is just an extension of the Eternal September. The population of the Internet is wildly different from those that you're thinking of: not only is a majority of the world now online, a vanishing minority of the countries many of us are primarily exposed to are not. There are plenty of reasons that this new population may establish different norms than the old one: Some say it's because they're privileged, and don't understand the harm that Enlightenment liberalism does to the marginalized. Some say it's because they were free-thinkers and iconoclasts, and indeed, you'd expect any heavily-selected subpopulation to be less conformist than "all people". Others have claimed it's simply intelligence: back when the Internet was all educated nerds, support for free speech was higher because of the well-known correlation between intelligence and free speech absolutism[1]. In addition to the Eternal September effect, I think the broader retrenchment of liberalism we see across the world is very relevant. The cause/effect relationship between the Internet and this cultural retrenchment is unclear but IMO, almost certainly bidirectional. My model of liberalism has always been that its support in large populations is a fragile state, and that it's only supported by the masses when they've cargo-culted it from their civic religion. The minute this effect fades, most people don't have the moral reasoning ability to actually hold a principle, and can't be convinced that protection of an enemy under a principle is a protection of that principle, not of the enemy. They also don't appear to have the capacity to understand that the world turns, and the person on top is guaranteed to be someone they dislike, at one point or another. The only skew that rolling back Enlightenment protections is likely to have over time is against the _marginalized_. [1] Note that this isn't a stand-in for "free speech is good", since the proponents of the privilege argument would claim that measures of intelligence are themselves just measuring privilege.
  • kitsune_ 6y ago
• afrojack123 6y ago
  Politicians turning social media sites into publication houses holding them accountable for content on their platforms. Politicians can now control the narrative by penalizing social media sites for non compliance. Social media sites have their moats widen.
• joeloya 6y ago
  The Galileo Principle. If you and everybody else is trying to silence something. You probably are on the wrong side of history.
  • nothingistrue 6y ago
    this is like thinking because everyone is against what you are doing you must be doing the right thing. it could be what you are selling is just bullshit and everyone knows it is bullshit.
    • read_if_gay_ 6y ago
      > this is like thinking because everyone is against what you are doing you must be doing the right thing It's not, because silencing something is very different from being against something.
      • octoberfranklin 6y ago
        Indeed. If everybody ignores you then you're probably selling bullshit. If they try to silence you, you're probably on to something. There are far, far, far too many bullshit-peddlers to even attempt to silence them all.
        • odonnellryan 6y ago
          Eh. Try to walk down a liberal city with a nazi flag. Plenty of people will tell you to screw off.
        • deleted 6y ago
          [deleted]
  • lenitabinol 6y ago
    Eh this doesn't apply in tons of modern cases.
  • 86J8oyZv 6y ago
• cs702 6y ago
  The Washington Post tried to verify the authenticity of the claims made by the blocked article... and so far they have found ZERO evidence supporting the story: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/14/hunter-bidens-alleged-laptop-an-explainer/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/10/14/hunter-bi... This bit, in particular, suggests that the blocked article actually deserves to be blocked: > The New York Post published PDF printouts of several emails allegedly taken from the laptop, but for the “smoking-gun” email, it shows only a photo made the day before the story was posted, according to Thomas Rid, the author of “Active Measures,” a book on disinformation. “There is no header information, no metadata.” The Washington Post has not been able to independently verify or authenticate these emails, as requests to make the laptop hard drive available for inspection have not been granted. -- EDIT: After some thought, I flagged the OP, because the more we upvote or comment on any story about the original blocked article, the more free exposure it gets -- which is exactly what the author of the blocked article wants. I hope the mods delete or hide this thread.
  • codecrusade 6y ago
    Wapo is owned by democratic landlord jeff bezos right? What a joke.
  • tick_tock_tick 6y ago
    I mean they didn't break the story and it's based on something physical I'd be surprised with those conditions if they could "independently verify" anything in <24 hours.
  • hartator 6y ago
    > There is no header information, no metadata. It has been a day that the article is online. We'll have these soon enough. Biden hasn't say this email is not real when asked. Which is a better proof than header information which can be faked as email sending can be done from any email to any email.
  • nkurz 6y ago
    Thanks for the explanation. I can half-agree, but think the meta-discussion about the role of Twitter and Facebook in shaping the US politics is worthy of discussion even if the NY Post article turns out to be a wholesale fabrication. You might be interested that I also posted this article [https://blog.erratasec.com/2020/10/yes-we-can-validate-leaked-emails.html https://blog.erratasec.com/2020/10/yes-we-can-validate-leake...] which talks about the relative ease of validating the emails using GMail's DKIM header. Unlike this one (where I think the first two pages of comments are actually pretty good), that one got very few votes and no discussion.
• DevKoala 6y ago
  Incredibly disappointed. I had never seen such a concerted effort to hide information in the USA. Is this how it feels to live under the CCP’s control?
  • doktrin 6y ago
    > Is this how it feels to live under the CCP’s control? This is an overly dramatic comparison that trivializes the Chinese surveillance state.
    • djsumdog 6y ago
      Agreed. The CCP is fucking terrible. We wouldn't be having this conversation in China. Well we might; tech people with VPNs and encrypted comms. But most normal people would no be able to see it. But I do fear the US is headed that direction. When you seen BLM protestors telling people to raise their fists and kiss their feat and people saying you must denounce racism over and over and over again no matter how many times you may have before. Make to mistake: These are American Struggle Sessions. We have people in major outlets, publications, tech .. all saying Trump people are universally racist and evil. 60+ million people voted for him. That's the most insane thing I've ever heard. I knew we were headed this way years ago. I wrote about it: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-fallout-of-american-anger/ https://battlepenguin.com/politics/the-fallout-of-american-a... I never thought it would get this bad. I don't think we'll turn into the CCP, but we are in danger of having dramatic shifts in what Americans consider morally right.
  • disown 6y ago
    > Incredibly disappointed. I had never seen such a concerted effort to hide information in the USA. Go read some history. Lincoln shut down hundred of newspapers during the civil war. Or the Red Scare/McCarthyism. The jim crow south for 100 years. > Is this how it feels to live under the CCP’s control? If the "CCP" had any control how come they allow so many posts about "CCP" all over social media? If russia or china had the level of control people are claiming, they aren't doing a good job exercising that control. Now israel and saudi arabia...
• codecrusade 6y ago
  Silicon Valley is the new Soviet union. I have been downvoted and outcasted for saying this. This itself shows how intolerant Silicon Valley is.
• 533474 6y ago
  Who cares, the censoring ended up spreading the story. If you are all so unbiased, why can't you just read both sides of the story - it is not like the article has disappeared from the internet...
  • 75dvtwin 6y ago
    because we do not want corporations claiming protections that they do not deserve. Editorializing content by twitter's own employees, or by crowd-sourcing, is still editorializing. So Twitter and FB, HN and others are publishers, not platforms. Claiming legal shields that apply to platforms, therefore, is not legal. This is like claiming taxable deduction of a charity, while being a for-profit-business.
• ironman1478 6y ago
  There have been some comments here about censorship and I think they are coming from a good place. However, I really think people are only looking at things from their perspective. I think a lot of people here are skeptical in a healthy way and can use inference to figure out if something written on the internet is truthful and correctly framed. A lot of people do not have those skills. I think these platforms need some form of censorship because clearly people are taking things they read randomly as fact and it's clearly having a damaging effect on society (see qanon). This specific instance definitely straddles the line between necessary/unnecessary removal (I think the content should be published) but let's please not act like this is the norm. It's an outlier. People are abusing these platforms to spread hateful and dangerous ideas and it's working because most people aren't internet literate. It is scary to see this (my parents lived through communist Romania), but I think to act like a lot censorship/removal of content on these platforms is unjustified is clearly disingenuous.
• d3ntb3ev1l 6y ago
  Free lie amplifiers cause more harm than responsibly “vetting” and filtering blatant lies.
• watertom 6y ago
  All the crazy stuff about Trump is true and all the crazy stuff about Biden all appears to be made up by the Trump/GOP camp. So we don't have an apples to apples comparison
• stunt 6y ago
  I hate misinformation strategy and I think it's nasty. But, I don't support censorship of any kind. We should find a better solution to fight misinformation. Perhaps the law system should hold politicians and their campaigns accountable for their lies. Currently it seems just an effective tactic that has no penalty.
• tuna-piano 6y ago
  Human information sharing has changed so much in such a short time. In the history of the US, the transitions from newspapers to radio took roughly the first ~150 years of the country. In just 30 years we've gone from TV->Social Media. Social media and the internet are just so different from anything we've had before. 1. Local newspapers (controlled by few) 2. Mail (1->1) 3. Radio (controlled by few) 4. Phone (1->1) 5. TV (controlled by few) 6. Internet (1->Millions) 7. WhatsApp/Texts (1->Few) 8. Social Media (1->Millions) My first reaction to the social media companies is one of fear that a private type of "ministry of truth" is being setup. However, it would seem that in the vast majority of our history that is the same setup we've had. Of course newspapers, radio and broadcast TV all had small groups of people determining truth and what was worthy news. That gives me some comfort that maybe these problems aren't that dire or new. My big fears are: -Internet infrastructure companies blocking access to content they disagree with[1]. While yet that blocking has started with the most egregious content, will they continue to block less egregious content? -The lack of trust in institutions and the differing priorities and truths pushed by different institutions. Why should the people trust any facts coming out of any of these major institutions when they appear so biased? Yesterday (when I looked) on the homepage of FoxNews.com Hunter Biden was referenced >20 times. Completely missing on CNN.com or MSNBC.com. -How can these companies maintain a semblance of neutrality when their employee bases are so skewed and seem to have such a huge level of groupthink? [1]https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/08/05/0323200/cloudflare-terminates-8chan https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/08/05/0323200/cloudflare-...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• crazygringo 6y ago
  > However, it is highly unusual for an article published by one of the mainstream popular newspapers to be treated in this way. That's a bit of a stretch. The NY Post is a tabloid [1]. Tabloids are technically newspapers, but they aim primarily to sensationalize [2]. Tabloids are nothing like the NY Times or Washington Post, which attempt to present objective, unbiased news. (Now you may argue that they fail at that -- but they do profess at least to aim for it, while tabloids don't even try in the first place.) So seeing a tabloid article flagged doesn't seem all that different from a blog post being flagged. Seeing the NYT or WaPo flagged, on the other hand, would be highly unusual. (I'm neither defending not criticizing FB/Twitter here, but just pointing out that the NY Post shouldn't be held up as even remotely a trustworthy source of reporting.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Post [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabloid_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabloid_journalism
  • throwawaylolx 6y ago
    I don't see how anything you said should contradict or even relate to the BBC statement you quoted--the statement seems perfectly fine, accurate, and objective.
  • sieabahlpark 6y ago
    > Tabloids are nothing like the NY Times or Washington Post, which attempt to present objective, unbiased news. You sure about that?
  • croes 6y ago
    Who decides if a newspaper is a newspaper or just a tabloid?
    • jMyles 6y ago
      You mean a broadsheet vs a tabloid? Some newspapers are in a broadsheet format, others in a tabloid format (and some, in other less common formats). The tabloid format is often used to shock. Is any of this in dispute?
• slipstream77 6y ago
  Forget Twitter and Facebook bias, I'm here for the confirmation bias.
• DeonPenny 6y ago
  The fact that they censor everyone including the press secretary so quickly is scary. Like the voice of the president got twitter ban like a commoner with the snap of a finger.
• AzzieElbab 6y ago
  Kudos to BBC for covering this. All US outlets other than FoxNews(obviously) are keeping quiet. Which is a shame, this is history in the making
  • giancarlostoro 6y ago
    Fox News has plenty of articles on the matter. Can you explain?
    • Const-me 6y ago
      >> All US outlets other than FoxNews (obviously) > Fox News has plenty of articles on the matter Right. > Can you explain? Not 100% sure, but I think you wrote your reply without reading the complete comment you were replying to.
      • giancarlostoro 6y ago
        I read it, and it reads confusing so I asked for clarification, what is it you think I missed maybe I did miss some context that is implied but isn't so obvious to all readers (in this case myself).
        • nkurz 6y ago
          It's a slightly complex sentence, but when AzzieElbab says "All US outlets other than FoxNews(obviously) are keeping quiet", they mean that Fox News is the only outlet that is covering the story, and everyone else is not. Thus when you reply that Fox News has "plenty of articles", you are agreeing with their claim. Since your response seems to imply disagreement, Const-me presumes (I think correctly) that you misread the original.
          • giancarlostoro 6y ago
            Oh I totally misread that not sure why, thanks for clarifying, man sometimes I miss the really obvious stuff. Thank you for bringing me back down to earth haha
• andy_ppp 6y ago
  Is Twitter down? I don’t know where to look to check if everyone can see if Twitter is down...
  • swebs 6y ago
    Are you using Firefox? There's been a bug affecting Twitter the past few days. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1665368 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1665368
    • andy_ppp 6y ago
      No it really was down it turns out: https://status.twitterstat.us/pages/history/564314ae3309c22c3b0002fa https://status.twitterstat.us/pages/history/564314ae3309c22c...
• prvc 6y ago
  Could someone explain, from Twitter's perspective, how reading data from a legally obtained hard drive constitutes "hacking"?
  • djsumdog 6y ago
    It doesn't. This is a pure excuse and it's a sad one. The NY Times posted financial information, which is actually illegal for whoever leaked it to divulge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVheQQ2sNM0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVheQQ2sNM0 The tax leak was a big nothing burger too. If you read any accounts blog looking at the leaked information, nothing was really out of the ordinary for big real estate people. Did Trump use a lot of loopholes to avoid taxes? Yes, but everyone who makes over a million a year pays people to do this. The Hunger Biden allegations are much much more serious. We're talking about a family member who was allegedly involved in key meetings with foreign states.
• hooande 6y ago
  Why couldn't twitter say "we will delete any tweets that are critical about a certain person"? is there a law against that? is it morally wrong? It seems that if they wanted, they could say "we want Candidate X to win and will do whatever is in our power to make that happen". What would people do then? Equal time laws don't apply to twitter any more than they do to your blog. There is nothing stopping them from acts of outright censorship for any purpose they choose. The nature of social networks is that some platforms will have more users and exponentially more value than others, so it seems like there isn't choice in the market. We as a society have to decide if "having the most users" is equivalent to the physical infrastructure connections that currently designate utilities and monopolies. Having to tolerate political censorship is an obvious tradeoff. But if we go full Section 230, we could wind up with a situation where US companies are hobbled and replaced by foreign competitors. Or where American companies stop improving their service because they enjoy the advantages of a utility/monopoly. It's actually a new and difficult social question that requires a lot of thought. I think I know what side I'm on.
• root_axis 6y ago
  Whenever topics like this are discussed, there is a very circuitous discussion around the crux of of the true issue: the culture war. If you accept the U.S model of capitalism then you inherently agree that free-speech on the internet is fine, anyone is free to make a website and put it on the same internet as everyone else. Content moderation is NOT in any way an anti-trust issue, if anything, "editorial bias" facilitates more competition because it creates an opening in the market for competitors to service those who have a problem with the existing options. Still, if you believe a public commons on the internet is something that is necessary then the solution is to have the government fund a literal public commons social media site that automatically inherits all the strengths of the vision of free-speech enshrined in the constitution. Problem solved... Except not, because the unspoken goal is to co-opt the audiences that these big tech businesses have invested billions in building and maintaining. Yet, these websites do not even "own" their users, all of whom capriciously interact with a multitude of different websites based on their various interests with a tendency to migrate to different communities as abruptly as the seasons change.
• andy_ppp 6y ago
  It’s amazing the timing of this coming out just before the election isn’t it. So so unlucky!
  • throwawayAXH79 6y ago
    Luck has nothing to do with it.
• KorematsuFred 6y ago
  As an insider I see the distinct apathy of big tech towards this single issue which I see as their Achilles heel. Big tech has failed to lay out the foundational principles they will use to perform moderation and have deliberately kept everything pretty shaky. I suspect this is because the tech companies themselves face following problems. 1. Workplaces are increasingly progressive and does not respect the diversity of thought. Reasonable conservative and libertarian groups are on fringe in most large companies. 2. Leadership is increasingly immigrant driven who often do not understand full implication of their policies and decisions. 3. Company is trying to feed the same propaganda they feed to their employees to the rest of the world without realizing rest of the world is very very different. 4. Rest of the media, political parties etc. constantly crapping on big tech does not help either. (If you hate success in your country, that success eventually will move out or will be born outside your boundaries e.g. TikTok). 5. Big tech has failed miserably to highlight all the good they have been doing through their moderation policies. Toolbar malware is a thing of past, you don't have to install Adobe Flash anymore anywhere and email spam in my gmail is zero. Big tech and their walled gardens have saved millions of hours and resources wasted on other rent seekers and instead diverted it to themselves while improving use experience for my grandmother and her brother. Big tech needs to play the same games that Big pharma and Big oil have been playing. They need to align themselves with various political groups, provide explicit platforms and assistance to everyone from far left to far right and make everyone feel included. This is not going to be simple but they have to do it.
  • throwawayAXH79 6y ago
    “ Leadership is increasingly immigrant driven who often do not understand full implication of their policies and decisions.” As an immigrant myself... spot on. It’s taken me a decade to understand a bit of the US, appreciate it’s branches, and I’m from Canada!
• patagonia 6y ago
  Remember all those "Build a Twitter Clone" coding tutorials? They'll all have to be updated to now include legal teams and should probably include a primer on the political process as well as a primer on the history and continued evolution of free speech.
• dilap 6y ago
  > It did not provide evidence that the meeting ever took place, and the Biden election campaign says it did not. This conflicts w/ a report by Politico: > Biden’s campaign would not rule out the possibility that the former VP had some kind of informal interaction with Pozharskyi, which wouldn’t appear on Biden’s official schedule. But they said any encounter would have been cursory.
• spo81rty 6y ago
  The only thing worse than writing unit tests is writing tests for destroying free speech.
• TedShiller 6y ago
  Censorship is a can of worms. If you do it for one side, you have to do it for the other side as well. Or don't do it at all. It's not so much that I'm against censorship. It's more that I don't believe it can be implemented successfully.
• tomohawk 6y ago
  Twitter: "The policy, established in 2018, prohibits the use of our service to distribute content obtained without authorization" https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1316525307441147907?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw https://twitter.com/TwitterSafety/status/1316525307441147907... And yet, there is information all over twitter about the presidents tax returns, which were illegally obtained. Twitter did not censor the Ayatollah's tweets about genocide of Israeli people. Twitter did not censor illegally leaked classified information in many instances. The Steele Dossier was a collection of unvetted opposition research, which has since been shown to have no basis in reality. When will twitter block this misinformation? So now, just before an election, we're supposed to believe that they're not acting in a partisan way?
• justinzollars 6y ago
  The United States 2020: All the downsides of Chinese censorship with none of the upsides of 18,000 miles of high speed rail, a peaceful society, and a growing economy because neither party is competent. I miss the internet being a libertarian place. Now it just sucks.
• doktrin 6y ago
  > However, it is highly unusual for an article published by one of the mainstream popular newspapers to be treated in this way. BBC coverage routinely, and correctly, classifies publications like the Daily Mail as tabloids - yet the NY Post is a "mainstream newspaper"? That's inconsistent.
• burtonator 6y ago
  Whatever solution the GOP wants needs to also apply to Fox (Faux) News...
  • sakopov 6y ago
    Fox News isn't in the business of censoring free speech. But nice try.
• adfm 6y ago
  Bias is demonstrated with privileged accounts. Get rid of the privileged accounts would be a good way to take care of the issue.
• xaei 6y ago
  The NY Post is not a serious news organization. Whatever the implication politically, this is more akin to limiting the spread of a headline like "Lizard-man found at UFO landing site." And a naked political hit job.
  • fareesh 6y ago
    Lizard-man should not be censored either.
  • 75dvtwin 6y ago
    I think the outrage is not at NY Post for posting the alligations or at ABC townhall anchor for ignoring them. Instead the outrage is about Twitter, FB and others who claim to be 'platforms' and therefore protected under section 230, but instead, systemtically and actively, acting as publishers (that are not under 230). Perhaps an anology is the outrage and legal consequences , when a for-profit-business uses non-profit charity tax code.
  • balola 6y ago
    This reads like slut-shaming.
• rdiddly 6y ago
  As a former New Yorker the thing I can't wrap my head around is how the Post ("Headless Body in Topless Bar") is now apparently being referred to as a respectable publication.
  • _a40s 6y ago
    It's not. It's that lurid tabloids sometimes break important stories. This comment expresses it better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24784836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24784836. (I'm not saying this one is an important story.)
  • 75dvtwin 6y ago
    Ok, as a former New Yorker, what do you think about this explanation of the outrage with the behaviour of social networks executives: https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/if-unreliable-is-the-issue-why-did-social-media-never-block-anti-trump-stories/ https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/if-unreliable-is-the-issue-why... ?
    • rdiddly 6y ago
      Don't care, sorry.
• dmix 6y ago
  They'd go mask off eventually. Much easier when it's hundreds of small influential 'thought leaders' and other high volume conversation. No on asks twice. Surprised they went for such a high profile piece (Not that NY Post is high profile, but the accusations are significant and the places that would run such an anti-Biden piece are getting thinner). And I say that not giving a shit who wins the US election but as someone worried about these unchecked and extremely powerful censorship power we're giving these big firms. The trendline has been very apparent to anyone paying attention, and its not even classically partisan but certainly of a certain ideology.
• btbuildem 6y ago
  Amidst all this chatter, the deafening silence regarding the veracity of that NYP article. Knowing the facts would really put this discussion in focus: preventing spread of misinformation vs censorship.
  • DaniloDias 6y ago
    What nyp article are you referencing?
    • strstr 6y ago
      The one this is about? 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...
    • 75dvtwin 6y ago
      and their view on censorship: https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/if-unreliable-is-the-issue-why-did-social-media-never-block-anti-trump-stories/ https://nypost.com/2020/10/14/if-unreliable-is-the-issue-why...
• velox_io 6y ago
  What I find most shocking about this, was that they banned the Press Secretary to the White House's Twitter account - That's the part I cannot get my head around.
  • brandmeyer 6y ago
    You can't get your head around which part? The idea that the White House Press Secretary would tweet ban-worthy remarks? Or the part where Twitter banned the account?
    • fareesh 6y ago
      If the Press Secretary makes ban-worthy remarks, the people have a right to know what those remarks are. This is basically secrecy, not ban-worthy remarks. She said something that the public is not allowed to know.
      • brandmeyer 6y ago
        The moment she started speaking on behalf of the Trump campaign she stopped acting in her role as an agent of the government, and became a spokesperson for the campaign.
    • derptron 6y ago
      The "ban-worthy" remark was linking the article.
• shitgoose 6y ago
  Twitter and FB did a HUGE favor to Republicans and personally to Trump. Hadn't they blocked the story, would we see 1159 comments here? Instead of "oh, not that again!.." story, that would have died two days later, we have fireworks that will last until election and will have significant impact. Many of who were mildly leaning towards Biden will reconsider.
  • 75dvtwin 6y ago
    I hope this incident of systemic bias by Twitter and others, will not just end in 'amplification' of the story. I hope the result of this outrage, is that the companies that claim to be 'plaforms', but instead are systemically and agressively -- are 'publishers' when it comes to political content, will face legal system. Just like a for-profit business would face, when they claim 'non-profit charity' taxation rules.
• fareesh 6y ago
  Reading so many comments here quoting the Biden campaign that the meeting did not appear on the official schedule and therefore the story is complete debunked. At this point I don't even know what to say honestly.
  • akvadrako 6y ago
    That wording is the main reason I think it’s true (though other info points to it being false). Why wouldn’t Biden just simply deny the story if the meeting never took place?
    • fareesh 6y ago
      The campaign's original response was the nonsense about the official schedule. This politico reporter managed a better response: "Biden’s campaign would not rule out the possibility that the former VP had some kind of informal interaction with Pozharskyi, which wouldn’t appear on Biden’s official schedule. But they said any encounter would have been cursory. Pozharskyi did not respond to a request for comment." Isn't it amazing? Speculative past tense! "Would have been"! https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/14/biden-campaign-lashes-out-new-york-post-429486 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/14/biden-campaign-lash...
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• frankzen 6y ago
  They're a publisher that edits content, plain and simple. Take away the platform status and let them play by the same rules as other publishers.
  • delfinom 6y ago
    You realize this helps them right? The tech companies now become engrained, they'll enact chinese style mass deletions of content, and nobody will be able to enter the market without a similar massive investment in heavy handed moderation.
    • swebs 6y ago
      >they'll enact chinese style mass deletions of content They already do that.
  • donmcronald 6y ago
    I think that would entrench the current tech giants because the liability to any startup entering the space would be huge and they wouldn't be big enough to partner with anyone. On the flipside, you'd have Facebook, Twitter, etc. partnering with media companies big enough to negotiate an indemnification clause into a contract that allows them into the recommendations engine(s). As soon as you start forcing liability onto those platforms, the content is instantly going to morph so it only includes "safe" publishers. The ToS will get updated so regular people agree to indemnification via forced arbitration and you'll only be able to post content that's widely seen if you're verified. TLDR; It would be Digg v4, but mandated by the government. Also, a lot of the current content is created by companies that are already considered publishers and nothing happens to them when they publish misleading news. So how does considering Twitter the publisher instead of Fox or CNN improve that? IMHO the big media companies would love to see some type of alternate publisher label affixed to big tech because it would detriment big tech to the benefit of big media.
    • Const-me 6y ago
      > how does considering Twitter the publisher instead of Fox or CNN improve that? People don’t register on Twitter to read Fox or CNN. They register to read other people. Making Twitter a publisher increases costs a lot. Especially portion of the cost that’s proportional to count of users and volumes of content. On-line ads don’t pay much per view, the only reason these companies are making so much money is they got crazy count of views with very low (in comparison) costs. They’ll have to find other sources of income. They can charge readers, like newspapers did for centuries. They can charge for publishing, I remember couple decades ago I was paying some reasonable subscription fee for a paid livejournal account, just to get rid of ads. Either model is fine. They both fix the current outrage culture, by removing the incentive. These companies will stop optimizing content for count of views, and will start listening to users who became their customers.
• dang 6y ago
  All: don't miss (if it's the kind of thing you want more of) that there are multiple pages of comments in this thread. You can reach them via the More link at the bottom of each page, or like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379&p=2 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379&p=3 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379&p=4 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379&p=5 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24789379&p=5
• known 6y ago
  "Politicians who value privileges above principles soon lose both" --Eisenhower
• fit2rule 6y ago
  Censorship on Big-Tech platforms is going to come back and bite them in the ass, soon enough. The things being censored don't just go away - especially if it relates specifically to criminal behaviour.
• remarkEon 6y ago
  In case anyone doesn't want to read through all the pages, here are the prevailing themes of this discussion as I see them. - the facts of the case are irrelevant, what's important now is how the tech companies reacted - the facts of the case are extremely relevant, because that would obviously inform how Twitter/Facebook deal with the content on their website - Twitter's response was severely mismanaged (or not, some think it was wise) because it will invite further accusations that they "censor" conservative voices - The usual, and completely unsettled, debate about publisher vs platform for social media companies - "How did we get here? When I was young, the internet was a free for all and it was cool. Can we go back to that?" - Some interesting discussions about if democracy can survive in the social media age - At times, some philosophical discussions about what is a "fact" - An interesting discussion about what it means to have "anonymous" sources - A great discussion about if the "slippery slope" actually is a logical fallacy There's a few more. To be quite frank, HN really is a good community. These are all worthy things to talk about! Within the horrorshow that is 2020, it's kind of cool that there's a place where a (mostly) civil discussion can be had about these extremely complex topics.
  • donmcronald 6y ago
    > "How did we get here? When I was young, the internet was a free for all and it was cool. Can we go back to that?" The biggest difference IMO is that trolls were simply trolls, not paid adversaries or guerilla marketers or influence peddlers, so ignoring the trolls was an effective response. The bots nowadays also makes the volume of everything so much greater and harder to deal with. The good old days aren't coming back.
    • Adutude 6y ago
      I was just talking w/ someone about the good old days (and farting some dust) and back in the day, if someone was trolling hard, or spamming or running bots that should not be run, they got hacked, and hard. Your servers would be a smoldering ruins. Then there was that case of the spammer who got hacked for being an ahat and he sued and got the hackers sent to big boy prison. That was back in the mid to late 80's (I think... it was so long ago. Back then we were setting up uucp, and uudecoding alt and we were all alt.binaries.gifs.sex.freaky.youdontwanttoknow Aol wasn't even a thing yet, but after Gen Pop got let in to the Intenet and that spam guy got someone put in jail, it was all downhill IMHO..
• AHappyCamper 6y ago
  Quite simply it's worrying. Social media has become our voice. It's how we communicate to others on nearly every subject. If that medium is heavily biased, our democracy, our freedom, and our very way of life is threatened. Either they stay impartial or they must be regulated.
• walkingriver 6y ago
  Maybe this is a naive take, but I don't see why platforms such as Facebook and Twitter bother. Just let the marketplace of ideas flourish. Isn't that ostensibly why they were created? Why put your thumb on the scale? In this case, they are inadvertently bringing more attention to the subject. How many more people are aware of the story now? Seems counter-productive.
  • willis936 6y ago
    Putting their thumb on the scale is their business model.
  • PhilosAccnting 6y ago
    AXIOM: Inherent bias will always prevail, proportional to self-interest. CONCLUSION: In this case, we know there's self-interest involved. Who, what, where, and why is relatively unknown to us, the pseudo-washed masses, so we must resort to our preconceived views. And, naturally, FB/Twitter make good money on all these preconceived views, so there's something recursive here.
• biffstallion 6y ago
  Shocking...NOT... that the social media platforms are all pro liberal. Then they pretend to be socially conscious and pro environment yet most of these companies have YET to commit to permanent work-from-home to stave off "carbon climb". Just another exposure of liberal hypocricy.
• Adutude 6y ago
  Oh noes, my beloved hacker news has sunk down into the political morass. I think the bigger picture, and meta topic here is that private companies have become the arbiters of what is and what is not appropriate social discourse. We as a society have chosen to let the Marks and Jacks of the world decide what is appropriate to publish. I think the bigger part of the problem is that while we sit and argue about whether the policy was fair or not or was biased or not, we are not asking the question of are the right people setting those policies? Should private companies with no accountability to the public they serve/sell to the highest bidder, be the ones to decide what constitutes valid social discourse? We all thought social media was a good idea, when we were young up and coming geeks. We thought it would be a force for good and allow people to connect and talk. What we as geeks actually invented were a bunch of brain washing machines that profit by selling the minds of their "users". I have an opinion about whether or not there was bias, but I don't think it's as important as the bigger question this story brings up. We now, in this thread are fighting about how the brain washing machines are being used, instead of the IMHO, the more important topic of, how can we turn off the brain washing machines and put the genie back in the bottle?
  • tboyd47 6y ago
    This is a rare case where the political class actually has a better grasp of the root cause of a social problem, and is further along in solving it, than the people at large. In the past year, we've seen both sides of the aisle clamoring to repeal CDA 230, while the public is split between either not caring or recoiling in horror at the thought. I don't believe for a second that the repeal of the CDA is really on the table in Washington. If they wanted to do it, they would have done it. But that would nuke Google, Facebook, and Twitter, all at once. (I personally don't think that would be all that bad for the internet or society in general, but I digress.) But they (meaning the swamp creatures, Trump included) realize now how much power they hold over Big Tech via this law, and how much influence they can exert over the world with this power. And they realize how bad it would be for the US stock market (which all of Washington worships as their god) if the tech giants failed all at once. I believe Techlash will either kill these companies or transform them, and I think that much is inevitable. That is why Zuckerberg straight up asked for regulation. He wants the government to save his company. We will probably see a series of regulations that places these giants under the control of Washington. Maybe it's time to put forward some kind of tech Bill of Rights now to limit what the government can do with our data beyond what's already prohibited in the actual Bill of Rights. Things like "No about queries." "No recording conversations in the home." etc.
• markvdb 6y ago
  TLDR: Twitter and Facebook regulating platforms causes more backlash, this time from Murdoch linked sewer press.
• JerryHolmby 6y ago
  Please explain Twitter's view on the following: I don't care about what is in the article. The NYPost is the #3 newspaper in the US. This story is not from Guccifer 2.0. If NYPost publishes something, it is shareable. It is not up to Twitter to "re-edit" major news sources. If they start doing that, they are a "publisher" and no longer a "platform."
• newhacker2719 6y ago
  Not a single mention of these leaks on the CNN homepage
• codecrusade 6y ago
  This is a censorship haven. I have been downvoted for calling the obvious bias tech platforms have. What a shame.
• rabboRubble 6y ago
  This tempest in a teapot is why I am an advocate for RSS. Why do people depend on Twitter or FB for their news? Curate your own news feed with RSS. Read widely, read things that challenge your belief systems, pick quality reporting. If the NY post is your jam spend 2 seconds actually setting up an RSS feed for their site, Reggie their reporting, and click through to read about Hunter Biden.